With Mount Nittany Elementary at capacity, new report recommends expansion project

Mount Nittany Elementary could be the latest State College Area school to undergo renovations after a recent facility and attendance boundary analysis recommended changes.

An update at Monday’s SCASD board meeting showed immediate concerns regarding Mount Nittany Elementary enrollment, with a project to increase the school’s capacity suggested. The attendance report was conducted by Crabtree, Rohrbaugh and Associates Architects, which previously designed State High, the Delta building and several district elementary schools.

The report also stated potential concerns with Grays Woods, Park Forest, Radio Park and Spring Creek elementary schools, where attendance levels should be monitored. Corl Street, Easterly Parkway, and Ferguson elementary schools were labeled as low concern.

The recommendation for Mount Nittany Elementary includes constructing six new classrooms, an instrumental music classroom, a separate cafeteria and a gym. Another recommendation was to establish a sensory classroom and move disability classrooms from Easterly Parkway to Mount Nittany Elementary to support autistic services.

All of Mount Nittany’s 18 classrooms will be in use this fall, along with two fifth-grade classes outsourced to the district’s Panorama Village Administrative Center.

The board will discuss the plans at its Aug. 21 meeting and potentially authorize the project, and approval for design developments could come on Sept. 18. Any concrete changes to attendance or enrollment boundaries could still be years away, with both the design and construction process expected to take a year each.

The Mount Nittany Elementary project would not be part of the district-wide facility masterplan, which includes improvements to Park Forest Middle School. Board member Gretchen Brandt said the Mount Nittany Elementary project would happen simultaneously with the district-wide facilities improvements.

“Just to clarify for the community and all the board members, that is not taking second place or anything like that, less priority,” Brandt said. “That’s not the case at all.”

The analysis also looked at the possibility of sudden enrollment growth from the 700-acre Toftrees West development, but finance and operations officer Randy Brown said enrollment should grow slowly. And the surrounding schools — Gray’s Woods, Park Forest and Radio Park — have the capacity to distribute students from the Toftrees development if needed, Brown said.

Board member Laurel Zydney raised concerns about the lack of other proposals for the project’s design process. The administration recommended appointing Crabtree, Rohrbaugh and Associates to streamline the project because of their knowledge of the district and enrollment needs.

“That’s a real concern I have in terms of efficiency of how we really show the community that we’re really looking carefully at how we spend our monies on these projects,” Zydney said.

Opportunities for staff and community input, similar to the process for the district’s previous elementary school projects, are expected.