The Chatham Shagbark

We need a better, projected student generation rate (SGR) for Briar Chapel. Why? The 0.4 SGR proposed by Newland is too low, and results in a gross underestimation of the money Chatham County will spend educating Briar Chapel students.

As I've previously written, Newland's SGR study is flawed for the following reasons:

1. It minimized Chatham County demographics, and focused primarily on Wake County.
   
2. It used data from homes built within the last 50 years, ignoring the fact that newer homes produce more students.
   
3. It failed to account for the above average number of bedrooms in Briar Chapel, whose homes will average 2556 square feet each (weighted average derived from Table A2 of Appendix B of The Fiscal Impact Analysis for The Briar Chapel Development).
   

So, Newland's SGR projection is too low. What is a more appropriate SGR? Using 2000 Census data for Chatham County, I've created the following table, which clearly demonstrates that newer homes produce more students, as do larger homes with more bedrooms.

Public School SGRs by Age of Home and Number of Bedrooms

derived from 2000 Census data for Chatham County

Age of Home	0 BRs	1 BR	2 BRs	3 BRs	4 BRs	5+ BRs	All BRs
0-2 years	0.48	0.33	0.38	0.67	1.10	1.42	0.62
3-5 years	0.40	0.27	0.32	0.56	0.91	1.18	0.51
6-10 years	0.37	0.26	0.30	0.52	0.85	1.10	0.48
11-20 years	0.30	0.20	0.24	0.42	0.68	0.88	0.38
21-30 years	0.24	0.17	0.20	0.34	0.56	0.73	0.31
31-40 years	0.22	0.15	0.17	0.30	0.50	0.64	0.28
41-50 years	0.16	0.11	0.12	0.22	0.36	0.46	0.20
51 - 60 years	0.13	0.09	0.11	0.19	0.31	0.40	0.17
61+ years	0.17	0.11	0.13	0.23	0.38	0.49	0.21
All Years	0.28	0.19	0.22	0.39	0.64	0.83	0.36

If we assume Briar Chapel's 2556 square foot homes will have, on average, 3.5 to 4.0 bedrooms each, they won't reach Newland's projected SGR of 0.4 for at least 40 years. Yikes! Do our Commissioners know about this?