Services Provided By Integrated Planning for School and Community

School districts nationwide are facing difficult planning challenges arising from an increasing student population, an aging school infrastructure, and increasing complexity in student reassignments and school redistricting. These challenges are shared by the communities that must fund building and renovation projects. The Operations Research/Education Laboratory (OREd) offers school planning solutions that are driven by data and supported by policies in order to gain community support.

Integrated Planning for School and Community (IPSAC)

OREd’s Integrated Planning for School and Community utilizes a variety of components to produce solutions for school districts experiencing issues related to growth and imbalance. Projects are tailored for an individual school district’s needs and OREd has successfully conducted IPSAC projects in over 30 diverse school districts, gaining community support with school planning solutions driven by policy and supported by data.

The various components that comprise Integrated Planning for School and Community include:

Enrollment Forecasting

Enrollment projections for the entire school district are a central feature of almost every system-wide K-12 study. [read more]

Land Use Studies

Land use studies look at existing, new, and planned residential subdivisions and offer a forward-looking view of a school district’s growth potential. [read more]

High-Resolution Growth Forecast

School districts can develop long-range facility plans by looking at the Out-of-Capacity table containing the building-by-building enrollment forecasts. [read more]

Optimal School Sites

School siting that is in concert with forecasted capacity demands and satisfies the school system’s policies can be determined through operations research techniques. [read more]

Optimal School Attendance Areas

Mathematically based and unbiased multiple attendance area scenarios can be constructed that explore various constraints such as school demographic balance, capacity utilization, or student academic achievement. [read more]

Exploring Attendance Area Scenarios

"What-if" attendance area scenarios allow a school district to address specific assignment issues and refine proposals to develop a final attendance area plan. [read more]