A State College Area School District facility capacity and attendance boundary analysis recommends an expansion of Mount Nittany Elementary School, according to an update presented to the school board on Monday night.
Mount Nittany is the only of the district’s eight elementary schools identified as having immediate concerns that need to be addressed, based on the analysis of enrollment trends and projections over 10 years conducted by Crabtree, Rohrbaugh and Associates Architects, with additional projections provided by school enrollment analytics firm DecisionInsite.
The recommendation calls for construction of six additional regular classrooms along with multiple small group instruction rooms, as well as establishing a separate gymnasium and cafeteria and an instrumental music classroom. The construction would also allow relocation of a multiple disability classroom from Easterly Parkway Elementary and establishment of a sensory classroom, both of which would support autistic services.
This school year will mark the third in a row that the 450-student-capacity Mount Nittany Elementary’s 18 classrooms will be at full use and two fifth-grade classrooms will need to be located in the nearby Panorama Village Administrative Center.
Frederick Withum, Crabtree Rohrbaugh director of educational planning, said the “sweet spot” is to be at about 90% of total seat capacity.
“The takeaway is you’re already out of space and it doesn’t look like anything is going to happen that’s going to come in and cause you to recoup any space during the length of the projections,” Withum said.
The recommendation would alleviate space issues at MNE, and also provide a potential solution if capacity were to become insufficient at Easterly Parkway and Spring Creek elementary schools, according to a memo from district administrators.
Spring Creek, Gray’s Woods, Park Forest and Radio Park elementary schools were identified as “potential concerns,” meaning that there is potential for enrollement growth that should be monitored but no immediate action is needed. Spring Creek, in particular, has seen “some higher than normal growth,” SCASD Finance and Operations Officer Randy Brown said. He believes that may be due to a few workforce housing developments that have been built in recent years and the purchase of smaller homes in the Houserville and Lemont areas by young families.
“I think that we’re finding by looking at our enrollment that more young families are purchasing those homes and that resulting in more students than we expected,” Brown said. “That type of turnover is somewhat hard to measure when the population is going to turnover and return with students for our school district.”
The development of the 700-acre Toftrees West poses the potential for sudden residential growth. But Brown said the residential portion of the mixed-use development — which could include up to 2,500 single-family and multi-family residences — is anticipated to occur slowly and not expected to have significant impact over the next five years.
If it were to develop rapidly, however, redistricting could be used to manage growth, though that is not expected to occur in the foreseeable future. Gray’s Woods, Park Forest and Radio Park, however, all have space and students could be distributed to those schools in phases if needed.
“If Toftrees came on like gangbusters all of a sudden, your relief valve is all three of those schools,” Withum said. “That will buy you enough time decide whether or not you want to make those changes permanent or if you want to add a wing or consider another elementary school. It’s something to watch and monitor but I don’t think at this point in time there’s anything calling for action on it.”
Corl Street, Easterly Parkway and Ferguson Township elementary schools were identified as “low concerns,” where enrollment growth is not expected to create challenges.
Easterly Parkway is located within State College Borough, where new housing development is not likely. A trend of turning rental units away from student housing could lead to an enrollment increase, but the relocation of the multiple disability classroom to MNE would increase classroom capacity at Easterly.
The board will discuss and potentially authorize the MNE project at its Aug. 21 meeting. Opportunities for staff and community input in late August and September, followed by potential board approval for starting design development. The design process would likely take a year, followed by a year of construction before the expansion would open for the 2025-26 school year.
Board member Gretchen Brandt noted that the MNE project does not preempt that much-needed Park Forest Middle School replacement, which will be part of a district-wide facilities master plan expected to be recommended in the fall and occur simultaneously.
“Just to clarify for the community and all the board members, that is not taking second place or anything like that, less priority. That’s not the case at all,” Brandt said. “It’s that with a building that big you want to do your DWFMP before you start that project, but this need at Mount Nittany El has been known for quite some time.”
District administrators also recommended that Crabtree Rohrbaugh, which led the analysis, be appointed as project architect based on its previous work for SCASD and to “allow the project to begin in a much more timely fashion and move forward as quickly as possible,” Brown said. Over the past decade, the firm has designed the high school, Delta, Corl Street, Spring Creek and Radio Park buildings.
Board member Laurel Zyndey said that Crabtree Rohrbaugh was appointed for all of those projects to move forward quickly and capitalize on funding opportunities, instead of the district going through a request for proposal process. She acknowledged that an RFP would not require the low bidder to be selected and that Crabtree Rohrbaugh’s prior work with the district, which she said she appreciated, might factor in its favor.
But, Zydney said, she still had concerns about again not opening the project to other proposals.
“I did want to point out that this is another time we’re being recommended to do this and I’m concerned about it,” Zydney said.
