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Tupelo Public School District, Tupelo, Mississippi

OREd produced optimal school siting based on student residences, building capacity, and school demographic balance with attention to the geographic proximity of the student's residence and the school.

The Tupelo Public School District (TPSD) was given the task by the community to include five major goals in the TPSD Future Excellence Plan:

• All schools should be demographically balanced in regard to the number of poverty and non-poverty students;
  
  
• Stability in school attendance while meeting the demographic balance goal;
  
  
• Clean feeder pattern configuration so student population are not split as they feed to upper elementary or middle schools;
  
  
• Reduce the current 11 elementary schools (one Pre-K, seven K-3, three 4-6 schools) to no more than four schools with the same grade configuration; and
  
  
• Meet the above objectives and achieve a student-teacher ratio goal of 15 to 1 in Grades 2 and 3.

The TPSD project was challenging because of the number of schools impacted, numerous grade configuration options, and rather “relaxed” building capacity constraints due to the funds available for expansions if deemed necessary. The restructuring committee had worked on this project for nearly two years and produced nearly 10 options; however, it was difficult deciphering the best solution among all the options. The Operations Research and Education Laboratory (OREd) was charged with working with the restructuring committee to develop a plan that met all the goals.

OREd worked with the TPSD during the 2006-2007 school year. Instead of studying and debating the merits of the many options produced by the restructuring committee, OREd produced optimal sites for K-2 and 3-5 schools as if there were no existing schools. The optimal school sites were produced based on student residencies, capacity of the buildings, and desired school demographic balance, all the while minimizing "student-to-school" distances. These sites were then compared with locations of current schools to identify closest schools and to weed out undesirable options.

The final recommendation was four pairs of schools serving K-2 and 3-5 grades. The remaining two schools were used for Pre-K and 6th grade centers. This exercise also pointed out future school needs as growth becomes an issue for TPSD.

The success of the Tupelo Public School District study lay in OREd’s ability to produce objective and mathematically based options that met TPSD’s goals.