Facility Studies
We can supplement our enrollment projections by connecting them to the current utilization of the school buildings. By doing this we can help future planning for the District based upon available classrooms, services and programs (both mandated and optional), core facilities, and other factors impacting students, teachers and administrators. Our studies are strictly limited to the ability of the district to deliver programs and services to students. We do not do engineering studies, however, we have often had our work supplemented or we have supported the work of architects and engineers.
Because our company has a strong educational background we view the buildings from the point of view of educators. In the process we are inclusive of central and building administrators in evaluating the overall utilization. The process begins with a review of the floor plans for each building. We count the number of general education classes, the number of self-contained special needs classrooms, the availability of rooms for specialized services and programs (for example, Occupational and Physical Therapy. We evaluate the use and number of substandard spaces being used and other areas that may have been repurposed for space reasons.
We also provide each building principal with a questionnaire regarding the utilization of the building. That is followed up with a tour of each of the district’s schools to help us get a true picture of how the space in the building is being utilized.
After the tours we prepare a report of our findings which includes the input for the building administrators. The report consists of narratives and tables which show our findings and also indicate the future utilization of the building which includes, but may not be limited to class sizes, available rooms, rooms for specialized programs (such as art, music, computer) and for special needs programs and services.
The table below is an example of the data combining the projection with utilization.