ITRE / News / News Archives / News Release 7-10-07

NCSU OR/Ed. Lab to Assess Education Requirements for Fort Bragg Regional Growth Plan

July 10, 2007

Raleigh, NC – The Operations/Research Education Laboratory (OR/Ed. Lab) at the Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE), North Carolina State University, will conduct an assessment of the education requirements to be included in the comprehensive regional growth plan for the Fort Bragg area as part of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) initiative.

An estimated 25,000 to 40,000 people are expected to move to the state’s Sandhills region as a result of BRAC, making Fort Bragg the largest Army post in the country. The implications of such growth on area communities will be significant. The growth plan is intended to offer a roadmap for achieving sustainable growth in the region over the next several years.

“The BRAC study is the largest regional planning initiative ever conducted for a military installation in the country,” said Jeff Tsai, director of ITRE’s pupil transportation program. “We are excited about the opportunity to work side by side with other national experts to examine all aspects of regional growth for the Fort Bragg area.”
ITRE’s OR/Ed. Lab will forecast the impacts of the anticipated growth on K-12 student populations, and examine specifically the number of new schools and teachers required to support the population increase. ITRE will work in partnership with Training & Development Associates (TDA), contracted by the BRAC regional task force to oversee the development of the comprehensive growth plan.

Utilizing the OR/Ed. Lab’s experience in the field of long-range school planning for the NC public school systems, TDA has asked the OR/Ed. Lab to assess K-12 educational needs for normal growth (growth already in the enrollment history), direct growth from BRAC activities, and induced growth from the anticipated regional growth. The study will encompass Cumberland County Schools, Hoke County Schools, Harnett County Schools, Lee County Schools, Moore County Schools, Richmond County Schools, and Robeson County Schools.

Tsai noted that the innovative methodologies and high resolution data employed by the OR/Ed. Lab will be applied to demographic variables at the regional level that are not always characteristic of the data sets used by traditional public schools. The first deliverable, a school enrollment building-by-building forecast to illustrate which areas of the school districts will exceed current capacity and by how much, is projected for November 2007.

“This is an ambitious timetable,” added Mike Miller, OR/Ed. Lab program manager, “but the goal is to give school districts a jump on facility planning because it typically takes between 18 to 24 months to construct an elementary school and up to three years to build a high school.”

For more information about BRAC and the schools/education working group, please visit www.bracrtf.com.

Located on NCSU Centennial Campus, ITRE is an inter-institutional center that serves all 16 campuses of the University of North Carolina. For more information about ITRE, please visit www.itre.ncsu.edu.

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