State College Area School District looks to study enrollment projections, attendance boundaries

State College Area School District is hiring a consultant to evaluate attendance areas, school boundaries and student demographics.

The board voted unanimously at its meeting Monday to start accepting proposals for a consultant.

“The rationale for this request is to assist the district in collecting demographic data to project enrollments for our elementary and middle schools over the next several years,” Superintendent Bob O’Donnell and Randy Brown, the district’s finance and operations officer, wrote in the motion. “These projections will be compared to our facility capacities to identify areas of future over-enrollment.”

The consultant would analyze current school capacity and attendance areas. Any decision to change school boundaries would be a recommendation from the administration, not the consultant, O’Donnell said during the meeting.

“At this point, any identified attendance boundary changes would not be implemented until the 2023-24 school year and maybe not until the 2024-25 school year,” O’Donnell and Brown wrote in the motion.

The district is most concerned with overcrowding in elementary schools in upcoming years. Mount Nittany Elementary has a capacity of 420 students and currently has 413 students enrolled, O’Donnell said.

“Mount Nittany is the one we’re concerned about the most,” O’Donnell said during the meeting. “We may be able to adjust something in our building to make it a little bit better for the students, specifically the students in the board room with no windows.”

A board member will be part of the interview process, a decision made following an hour of discussion at its Feb. 7 meeting.

The district last evaluated attendance areas and boundaries in 2010, O’Donnell said during the meeting.

The project is in the very early stages and the board is estimated to approve a contract with the consultant on April 18.