Key Points
- Wilton’s school enrollment has fallen short of the consultant’s projections for a second consecutive year.
- Updated forecasts anticipate two more years of declines before enrollment begins to rebound.
- Shifting student numbers could prompt staffing changes, while housing development influences longer-term projections.
Why It Matters: Enrollment forecasts help guide school budgets, teacher assignments and planning for future classroom needs.
Enrollment numbers are again lower than expected for Wilton Public Schools, with the 2026-27 school year projections made by an outside consultant overstating the number of students actually attending the district.
On Thursday, Oct. 22, the Board of Education heard the annual report from its enrollment consultant, MP Planning Group, LLC, which had projected 3,603 K-12 students in Wilton for the current school year. As of October, only 3,541 are enrolled, according to WPS — 62 fewer than projected.
MP’s report from early October 2026 puts the district’s K-12 population at 3,550, putting the difference between that count and its earlier projection at 53 students.
Under the consultant’s median projections, Wilton High School is anticipated to see a drop of 91 students next year, while Miller-Driscoll School is expected to gain 22 — 20 of them in kindergarten. Middlebrook School is projected to increase by 14 students, while Cider Mill School would lose 21.
Last year’s projections by MP Planning Group had also overestimated numbers for the 2025-26 school year by 112 students.
Pat Gallagher, cofounder and MP principal, again explained that enrollment numbers were “trending below” expectations, despite their projections for this year having been “revised downwards.”
Offering a 10-year enrollment forecast, Gallagher projected that Wilton’s K-12 enrollment will continue to decline overall for the next two years before making what he projects will be an upswing in 2029-30, with growth continuing after that.
While he offered a range of projections, with both high and low estimates, he recommended the district use the medium projection.
That scenario shows Wilton’s K-12 enrollment falling from the consultant’s count of 3,550 this year to 3,474 in 2027-28, and then bottoming out at 3,462 in 2028-29.
In 2029-30, enrollment is projected to grow to 3,516, then continue upward over the next seven years, reaching 3,750 in 2032-33 and finally 3,910 in 2036-37.
While the housing market since the pandemic — and related inward migration — have contributed to a decrease in new students arriving in town, new and planned multi-family housing developments are expected to increase student numbers over the longer term, Gallagher said.
“2021 was our peak year for home sales. We saw almost 300 new students between October of 2020 and October of 2021,” he said. “And that has decreased each of the last five years. For 2026-27 we have just over 100 new-to-district students and that decrease has been felt across all of the grade groupings.”
While Gallagher said other area towns have all experienced similar enrollment declines amid a slow housing market, Wilton, however, is something of an outlier because of the number of multi-family housing development underway or planned. A portion of that is affordable housing, which he said tends to bring higher numbers of students with it.
“That’s helped keep it a little bit higher than some of your peers,” he said.
According to Gallagher’s figures there are 256 newly occupied units, 301 units under construction and 480 approved units, for a total of 1,137 units. An additional 275 units are in the initial planning stages.
While affordable units can have generate a higher ratio of students, Gallagher said the projections assume 28 students per 100 units across developments.
“We’re estimating that when all of these units are completed, we’ll have an additional 219 students involved in public schools,” he said.
“We haven’t applied different assumptions for individual projects,” he said. “That’s certainly something that we can look at in future updates.”
BOE member Lori Bufano pointed out that the larger developments depend on sewer capacity, as has recently been reported.
“I think we’re close to max for any large projects, so this could be it,” she said.
Superintendent Kevin Smith noted that at this time the school buildings have capacity to accommodate enrollment increases. In comments he made later in the meeting about preliminary budget plans for Fiscal Year 2028, Smith said that the projections may warrant an additional kindergarten teacher, while two or possibly three teachers at Wilton High School may need to be reassigned because of what may be a loss of close to 100 students.
Over the next 10 years the largest enrollment increase is expected at Middlebrook, according to the projections, with its student population rising from 822 this year to 974 in 2036-37. During that same period enrollment at the high school is projected to bottom out in 2029-30 with 1,038 before climbing back up to 1,129 in 2036-37.
Conversely, according to the projections Miller-Driscoll’s K-2 population will show continuous growth into 2031-32, when it would hit 867, then stabilize, with changes of only two or three students annually in the ensuing years.
Cider Mill, meanwhile, is projected to bottom out next year with 795 students in grades 3-5, then increase in fits and starts, reaching 903 students in 2029-30 and topping out at 948 in 2034-35 before beginning a slow decline.
What concerns me about these enrollment projections is that we keep discussing the numbers without asking the most important question: WHY are families leaving, and why are enrollment trends different across grade levels?
If enrollment is declining at Wilton High School, that is one thing. But if our youngest elementary grades are experiencing significant demand and Miller-Driscoll is becoming increasingly crowded, we need to look beyond district-wide totals. A decline at the high school level does not tell us what is happening in our elementary schools, where classroom size, student needs, scheduling, and the overall learning environment matter enormously.
I would like to see the Board of Education examine several questions:
1. Are we looking at the right enrollment numbers?
District-wide projections can mask what is happening within individual schools and grade levels. We need transparent, year-by-year enrollment data, including students entering and leaving the district, transfers between schools, and withdrawals from Wilton Public Schools. Most importantly, do we know why families are choosing to leave?
2. Is the structure of our school system working for our youngest children?
Could having one large elementary school serving kindergarten through second grade create challenges that deserve closer examination? And as children move into the next phase of elementary school, are we adequately considering the effects of school size, transitions, daily schedules, and the demands placed on young students?
These are legitimate questions that deserve research, not assumptions.
3. Are our elementary school schedules working for children and working parents?
The current scheduling structure can create significant challenges for families, particularly when younger children must manage early mornings and long school days, while working parents must coordinate employment, transportation, and expensive after-school care.
Personally, I believe we should seriously consider whether our youngest students would benefit from an earlier dismissal, allowing them to return home less exhausted. For working families who already have preschool or childcare arrangements, a schedule that better accommodates the transition from preschool could also make a meaningful difference.
We should evaluate the educational, developmental, and practical implications of our schedules rather than assume the existing arrangement is the best one.
4. What role is technology playing in our elementary schools?
We also need to examine how much screen time our youngest students receive throughout the school day, including educational programs and apps used outside direct instruction. Technology is not automatically beneficial simply because it is labeled educational.
Are these tools improving learning outcomes enough to justify their use? What evidence supports their use at the elementary level? Are we considering their effects on attention, classroom engagement, and children’s overall school experience?
These questions deserve evidence-based answers.
5. Are we examining why families are choosing alternatives to Wilton Public Schools?
Housing trends, demographics, and new residential developments are important factors in enrollment projections. But they cannot be the only factors we consider.
If we want to retain families and understand enrollment trends, we should survey parents whose children have left the district, as well as current families. We should ask about school size, classroom experiences, scheduling, technology, academic expectations, childcare challenges, and other factors that influence their decisions.
We cannot address problems we are unwilling to investigate.
6. Why are we planning for future growth without first understanding our current challenges?
The consultant projects that enrollment will eventually rebound, partly because of planned multifamily housing developments. But projections are not guarantees. Housing construction, occupancy, demographic changes, and the number of school-age children per household can all affect actual enrollment.
Before using anticipated growth to guide long-term staffing, budgeting, and facilities decisions, we should understand both the reliability of those projections and the current experiences of the families already here.
Wilton should be asking two questions, not just one: How many students will we have, and why are families making the educational choices they are making?
If we focus exclusively on housing units and projected enrollment, we risk overlooking opportunities to improve our schools, retain local families, and make better decisions for our children.
Our goal should not simply be to accommodate whatever enrollment numbers a consultant predicts. It should be to create an elementary school experience that works for children, supports families, and gives residents confidence in the education their tax dollars fund.
Before we assume enrollment will rebound because of development, let’s take an honest look at what is happening inside our schools today. The numbers tell us WHAT is happening. We owe our children and families an investigation into WHY.