Wilton Schools Enrollment Falls 112 Students Below Projections, Officials Explain Why — and What May Be Down the Road

Wilton Public Schools‘ October 2025 enrollment came in under projections — 112 students fewer than expected and nearly 100 fewer than last year’s actual counts — but school officials don’t appear fazed.

Pat Gallagher, co-founder of MB Planning Group, LLC and the district’s paid enrollment projection consultant, was back before the Board of Education on Thursday night, Oct. 23, to explain why this year’s numbers came in notably lower than his projections had anticipated.

While he said the dip isn’t cause for alarm, school officials said the shift will likely have staffing implications down the road at one school in the district.

Last October, Wilton had a total of 3,699 K-12 students enrolled in the district. At that time, Gallagher projected a medium estimate of 3,712 students for 2025-26, noting a high-low range of 3,686 to 4,345.

This year, the K-12 enrollment as of October is 3,600 students.

“This is largely due to the housing market and the lack of housing turnover that we’ve seen throughout the region,” Gallagher said, noting that neighboring districts are experiencing similar declines.

He described how the projections counted on a number of single-family homes being sold by people in town with grown children, or no children, giving an opportunity for new, young families to move into Wilton.

“When there’s houses for sale, it’s often empty-nesters who have sent their kids through the school system, selling to the next generation of families who are gonna put their kids through the system,” Gallagher said.

“And with no inventory, that kind of generational turnover hasn’t happened,” he said, “and it’s reflected in our enrollment this year.”

“Interestingly enough, your sales are not down as much as some of your peer communities,” he said.

Gallagher said he’s lowered migration assumptions for the next two years knowing that the housing market is not likely to turn around instantaneously, adding that some people won’t sell their houses because of higher interest rates.

“We’re kind of at the whim of larger federal policy here,” he said.

“Over the next two years we’re taking that more pessimistic view on the housing market and migration,” Gallagher said. “Prices obviously are also impacting that. Prices have almost doubled over the last six years, again something we’ve seen throughout the region that may be pricing out families that could have traditionally afforded to live here.”

He explained that, while there is significant development underway in Wilton, the one- and two-bedroom units that make up most of the new housing stock are not usually associated with producing new students in a district.

Gallagher said that, meanwhile, there has been an uptick in births over the past four years.

“This large birth bubble will start entering kindergarten next year, so that’ll be something we’ll closely track over the coming years,” he said.

“Interestingly enough, kindergarten is one of the few grades that exceeded what we projected by seven students,” Gallagher said, “but the remainder of the elementary  and middle school grades are trending below, and we also have a handful of grades at the high school level that are really spot-on.”

Regarding the latest projections, Gallagher once again suggested the district focus on the middle of his three projection models, which he said will show modest growth over the next five years, followed by greater growth.

“The middle school is projected to see the greatest growth in the near term,” he said, while the high school will a decline in the next couple of years.

While Gallagher’s medium K-12 projection for 2025-26 is 3,623 — 23 more students than are currently enrolled — he’s anticipating that next year it will drop to 3,603. 

The K-12 total for 2027-28 will drop further to 3,536, then rise to 3,589 the following year, 2028-29.

According to these new projections, the medium K-12 enrollment in 2035-36 will rise to 3,989 students.

Board member Pam Ely said that the talk of the town does match with the numbers.

“They’ll all saying, ‘Well, we’ve lost 100 kids,’ and ‘What are we gonna do? 

“Do we have to rethink all of these,'” Ely said, “and after these projections, we’re gonna have lots of kids, lots and lots of kids.”

“If the projections bear out,” Superintendent Kevin Smith said.

Smith said that there were not going to be any short-term staffing implications for the district, but noted that with enrollment dipping at Wilton High School over the next several years, it would likely impact staff numbers there, as staffing is directly connected to course numbers.

“We’re gonna have a smaller high school,” Smith said. “We’re gonna have fewer staff.”

“They’re gonna get quite a bit smaller before they start to grow again,” he said.