Committee considers three growth options For Digital First Media

District expects continued growth over next 5 years

NEW LONDON » The Avon Grove School Board Committee of the Whole is meeting roughly twice a month as they work on preliminary steps toward a renovation or construction project. On Jan. 30, they tackled the issue of how many students to plan for and how much free space to allow so that buildings can be sized to best fit future needs.

The board agreed to use an average of projected numbers for the next five years. There was a question on the numbers available for the Penn London Elementary School, since the addition of full-day kindergarten was not considered in the original demographic projections.

Using the average projections yields an estimate of 971 students to plan for in Penn London, which is currently serving 906 students in Kindergarten through second grade. The projection for the Avon Grove Intermediate School, which currently houses grades three through six, is 1,535. In both cases, these figures will represent the school at 90 percent occupancy, giving room for any unexpected spikes in growth.

The Fred S. Engle Middle School for grades seven and eight is projected to have 839 students, while the high school will be calculated for 1,752 students. For both these buildings, those figures will represent a school sized for students at 85 percent capacity. The difference between the size for elementary and secondary schools is made because students have many more course options that require more flexibility of space.

Among the board members, Lynn Weber objected to using the 85 percent occupation rate for the high school. At that percentage, the school would be sized for a full capacity of about 2,000 students, a number she feels is high.

The number of students per building could be revised depending on the design plan the district eventually decides upon. Three of the four options that remain on the table include restructuring of the grade levels per building, moving second grade to the Intermediate School and sixth grade to the middle school.

The first option sees a new high school built on the district’s Sunnyside Road property, and renovates the existing high school to a middle school, leaving the current middle school vacant. The second option builds a new middle school and renovates the high school, connecting it to the Fred S. Engle building. A third option builds additions to the middle school and high school along with high school renovations. The fourth option, which does not call for moving grades, shows renovations and additions district wide to eliminate the modular classrooms.