Enrollment & Capacity

Historically, enrollment at Mahomet Seymour CUSD #3 has shown steady growth, following a dip which ended in 2008. Over the past decade, the district has seen growth of roughly 16% through the 2024 school year where we have eclipsed 3500 students for the first time (3,506 as of 9/9/2024). Year over year growth has been consistent at approximately 1.4% per year on average since 2015.

Historical Enrollment (Actual)

In the Fall of 2018, the Mahomet-Seymour schools partnered with the Village of Mahomet to have a demographic study/enrollment forecast done. This was presented to the Board of Education and VOM Board of Trustees in January of 2019. In the fall of 2021 during previous facility planning efforts, the district obtained updated forecasts, going out to the year 2031. While the annual figures varied from the actual following the dramatic enrollment shifts due to the COVID 19 pandemic, the growth trends have tracked and have been applied to actual enrollment figures projecting through the year 2031 shown below.

Projections can only be made so far into the future based on available data. In order to project further, the district has considered those projections along with historical year over year growth trends which are shown in the chart below.

In the past 10 years (2015-2024) the district has seen an average year over year growth of 1.4% or roughly 45 students per year. This is an average, but has been utilized as a planning reference when deciding what student capacity to plan for moving forward.

Capacity Analyisis - Students per Grade

Currently the district has an average grade level size of 270 per grade across the district. When planning for the new buildings as well as the space allocations for the existing facilities, we want to avoid two outcomes.

A. Overbuilding where we end up with excessive unused space

B. Under planning where we are "out of room" again in just a few years leaving us right back where we started.*

In order to alleviate these issues, we have based capacity on two figures.

Planned capacity: This uses the target number of students per class room which varies by grade - This equates to roughly 300 students per grade (~11% increase from today's enrollment)
Max Capacity: This uses the MAX number of students allowable per class room which varies by grade. - This equates to roughly 350 students per grade (~30% increase from today's enrollment)

*Note: Middletown Prairie was designed to be as large as possible with no tax increase. This depth of district capacity analysis was not a factor at the time of that project.

As planned, the district would reach planned capacity under average growth (1.4% year over year) in approximately 2034. We would not reach MAX capacity until 2045 - past the date of maturity on the currently proposed referendum bonds.

With high growth: 2.0% year over year, we would hit planned capacity in roughly 2033 with max capacity in 2041.

Low growth: .9% year over year, would hit planned capacity in roughly 2036 with max capacity not being surpassed for next 20+ years.