ITRE / News / News Archives / News Release 9-11-06

ITRE School Location Project Will Benefit Planners for 20 Years

September 11, 2006

Raleigh, NC – Over the past two years, the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) has worked with the Operations Research and Education lab (OR/Ed.) at the Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) on a long-range building plan to meet the needs of its rapidly increasing school population. The ultimate goal is to network for future communication between the OR/Ed. lab, WCPSS, and Wake County Planning jurisdictions.

This project is an Integrated Planning for School and Community planning system, which is a scientific planning process that helps to determine the best locations to build new schools and determine how district lines should be drawn in order to balance the student body at each school.

The lab participated in several Wake County planning community meetings to discuss how WCPSS and county/municipal planners can collaborate in long-range school facility planning processes. Land Use data from county and municipal planners would lead to the location of school sites to meet the demands of that growth.

The 13 municipalities include: Apex, Garner, Morrisville, Wake Forest, Cary, Holly Springs, Raleigh, Wendell, Fuquay-Varina, Knightdale, Rolesville, Zebulon and Wake County.

The results of the effort will produce the Student Potential Distribution Model, a data driven 20-year student population distribution among 13 planning jurisdictions. The projections produced by this model will be used to determine new school locations and therefore provide WCPSS with valuable planning tools to meet the needs of its rapidly increasing school population.

To create this Model, the OR/Ed. lab performs system-wide forecasting, Land Use Study, Out-of-Capacity Analysis, and School Location Optimization and Attendance Boundary Optimization.

By April 2006, the lab had collected enough data for the model. The lab then error-checked and calibrated the model with the submitted data.

The Student Potential Distribution Model was completed in June, and the lab will use Operation Research techniques to produce optimal target areas for new school facilities based on capacity needs.

ITRE, administered by North Carolina State University, is a non-profit organization that conducts research, education, and technical assistance projects on a wide variety of surface transportation issues with the goals of solving problems and creating new products, better services, and smarter workers. ITRE is located at NCSU’s Centennial Campus. For more information about ITRE and Pupil Transportation services, please visit our Web site at www.itre.ncsu.edu.

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