New State High facility to offer more space to accomodate future student population

This summer marked the second full year of construction on the State College Area High School project.

Once finished in the summer of 2019, the final campus will be about 200,000 square feet larger than the previous two-school facility.

District Director of Physical Plant Ed Poprik said a feasibility study was conducted that backs up the need for a high school campus of that size despite a student population that he said was at its lowest in the 2016-17 school year in at least 20 years.

The new campus also includes the addition of the Delta Program, which will move to the North Building from its current facility on Fairmount Avenue.

“We are sizing the building so as we look at these, we know population will never be stagnant — it will be rising and lowering and we have indications that the elementary school (population) will start to rise and we do also have the ability to have more students in the high school,” Poprik said. “You have more ability to adjust to population based on how you schedule the building. So we do have and feel there is enough capacity to go into the foreseeable future.”

District spokesman Chris Rosenblum said the high school had 2,086 students in the 2016-17 school year — the lowest student population for the Westerly Parkway campus since the 1999-2000 school year. Those numbers do not include virtual students or those enrolled in the Delta or RIT programs.

North and South Building population peaked during the 2004-05 school year with 2,562 total students. The largest graduating class since 1999-2000 was the Class of 2006, with 665 students.

State College Area School District administrators worked with contractors who studied five and 10-year demographic projections.

In 2009, educational planner Bill DeJong completed a study for the district, Poprik said. It was updated in 2014, and again last year by Crabtree, Rohrbaugh and Associates, the architects for the State High project.

The school demographic analysis was based on several factors, including population projections that looked into births, net migration, K-12 enrollment, alternate schooling and new housing.

Poprik said the State High campus has and will include two buildings on Westerly Parkway.

The North Building prior to construction was about 230,000 square feet and South Building was about 190,000 square feet. However, when the high school project is completed, the two-building campus is expected to exceed 600,000 square feet, according to facility designer and architect Jeff Straub.

The first phase of construction, which includes the demolition of most of the South Building and subsequent construction, is expected to be completed by Christmas.

Phase two, new additions to the North Building and the completion of the South Building, is set to begin in January and last through the final completion date, just before the start of the 2019-20 school year.

This story was originally published August 26, 2017 at 7:20 PM with the headline "New State High facility to offer more space to accomodate future student population."