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Residents’ schools study

The Ridge and Wappingers schools

Children living at The Ridge would attend three Wappingers Central School District schools. This study looks at how full those schools are, what the district already expects, and how many students 198 homes would add.

≈37–72

public-school students from The Ridge (estimate, district's method)

Sheafe Road

the zoned elementary school, K–6

628

Sheafe Road’s projected peak (2026–27), before The Ridge

Not counted

The Ridge is not in the district’s enrollment projections

Which schools

On the district’s own boundary maps, the whole site falls in the zones for Sheafe Road Elementary (K–6), Wappingers Junior High (7–8) and Roy C. Ketcham High School (9–12). (The district assigns homes by street, so its Central Registration office has the final word.)

SchoolGradesEnrolled nowDistrict projectionFrom The Ridge
Sheafe Road ElementaryK–6612 (2024–25)Peak of 628 in 2026–27, then 599 by 2034≈20–40
Wappingers Junior High7–8764 (2024)726–765 through 2034≈6–11
Roy C. Ketcham High School9–121,558 (2024)1,468–1,520 through 2034≈11–22

What the district already expects

  • The district’s 2024–25 Comprehensive Long Range Planning Study (Western Suffolk BOCES) projects district-wide enrollment falling slightly, by 2.3% by 2034. But children attend their zoned school, and Sheafe Road is projected to rise to its highest enrollment, 628, in 2026–27, with 28 classes.
  • The study lists large housing projects and their expected students, but it does not include them in its projections, and The Ridge is not on its list at all; it was filed afterwards.
  • One project that is on the list, Buckingham (188 rental units at Nelson Avenue and Channingville Road in the Village), is expected to bring 24 school-age children and appears to sit in the same school zones. Its students and The Ridge’s would arrive at the same three schools.

How many students would The Ridge add?

We used the same source as the district’s study: Rutgers University’s 2018 residential multipliers (the average number of public-school children per home, by type and size of home, for housing built since 2000). The application calls The Ridge affordable housing; lower-income rental households have more children per apartment, so we show both.

HomesAll householdsAffordable rentals
82 one-bedroom0.06 per home0.088 per home
82 two-bedroom0.19 per home0.408 per home
24 three-bedroom rentals0.48* per home1.087 per home
10 three-bedroom townhomes (for sale)0.48 per home0.48 per home
Public-school students≈37≈72

Unit mix from the September 2026 application (82 one-, 82 two- and 34 three-bedroom homes; the April 2026 letter describes 10 of them as for-sale townhomes, which we take to be three-bedroom). *Rutgers gives no all-household figure for three-bedroom apartments, so the townhouse figure is used. Split by level using Rutgers’ age profile: roughly 55% elementary, 15% grades 7–8 and 30% high school. Older New York multipliers (Rutgers, 2006, from 2000 Census data) give a higher 80–115, but newer data show fewer children per apartment.

At Sheafe Road, 20 to 40 more children is roughly one to two more classes at today’s class sizes (about 22 per class), arriving as the school reaches its projected peak. Add Buckingham’s elementary students and the school could be 30 to 50 children above the district’s own peak projection.

Questions for the Town Board and the school district

  1. Has the Town asked the Wappingers Central School District for a school-impact assessment of The Ridge?
  2. What is Sheafe Road Elementary’s capacity, and how would 20–40 more children affect class sizes?
  3. What would The Ridge and Buckingham together mean for Sheafe Road, Wappingers Junior High and Ketcham?
  4. How would children be bused, and at what cost, given the site’s single driveway onto Route 9D?
  5. How many of the homes would be affordable, and at what bedroom sizes? That decides which estimate applies.

Sources