Integrated Planning for School and Community

Integrated Planning for School and Community (IPSAC) is a suite of tools and practices designed to assist decision makers in the school planning process. IPSAC is a product of the Operations Research and Education Laboratory, located at the Institute for Transportation Research and Education on Centennial Campus at North Carolina State University. IPSAC was a 1998 Edelman Prize Winner, awarded by the International Forum of Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), the world’s leading professional association of operations researchers and management scientists. The planning system has been featured in numerous professional journals, newspapers, and media broadcasts.

Some of the components of IPSAC are:

A comprehensive Land Use Study of the school district quantifies future growth by school attendance zones. The Land Use Study typically includes two components: community interviews and geographic information systems (GIS) analysis.

The purpose of the community interviews is to capture stakeholders’ knowledge and perceptions of key trend indicators, factors encouraging growth, factors constraining growth, and transportation and water/sewer issues that may impact residential and non-residential developments. A critical task of the community interviews is to locate and identify all new and planned residential subdivisions.

A spatial analysis based on geographic information systems (GIS) parcel data provides quantitative data concerning available parcels and subdivisions lots that can be used to identify areas of future growth. Student demographic analysis can also be conducted at this stage to better understand socioeconomic components that may influence school assignment decisions.

Integrated Planning for School and Community (IPSAC) used by the Operations Research and Education Lab (OREd) recognizes that the central feature in almost every study is a system-wide K-12 membership forecast. Using standard cohort techniques along with optimal trend-matching tools, OREd can produce short to long-range enrollment forecasts for the entire school district.

OREd selects the forecasting model most appropriate for the District.

Incorporating historical school membership figures and available newborn data for the school district, OREd uses a variety of cohort survival models to project system level and/or school-level membership. OREd’s forecast method does not rely on an arbitrary choice of years or weights. Instead, it undertakes an empirical search on the membership history of each school district to determine the optimal forecast model.

Models may also be created using a GIS-based analysis that includes a geocoded student layer and a parcel layer. Information from a Land-Use-Study (LUS) may also be incorporated to forecast the location of students entering the system because of new residential development.

The high-resolution student population forecast allows OREd to use Operations Research techniques to determine optimal sites for new schools.

Optimal siting for new schools can be especially important for growing districts and those about to seek voter approval for school construction funds. OREd constructs school site scenarios by minimizing student travel distance while maintaining all other school board policies pertaining to constraints such as school capacity, demographic balance, and grade structure.

The outcome for this IPSAC component is a set of maps and data known as scenarios with the optimal target sites for new schools that is in concert with forecasted capacity demands and that satisfies the school system’s policies.

The output from OREd’s GAMS software may also provide optimal scenarios that do not include new schools sites. Optimal scenarios may guide districts in decisions about re-aligning school attendance zones.

While the optimal attendance scenarios generated in the optimization component of IPSAC may satisfy specific school board policies, there are always realities that must be considered that often cannot be formulated in the optimization model. OREd has developed tools that enable school districts to explore “what if” attendance zone scenarios that address specific student assignment issues.

In most cases, few attendance zone scenarios survive as potential school assignment plans after rigorous testing of optimization constraints. Understanding that student assignment plans often impact communities in ways that cannot be included in the model, OREd customizes a Scenario Builder tool that allows school districts to modify optimal assignment scenarios and simulate “what if” attendance zones.