McKissick Associates to Conduct Feasibility Study for Elizabethtown School District

June 16, 2005

The Elizabethtown School District has retained McKissick Associates to conduct a feasibility study for the district. In a meeting on April 12, 2005, the Elizabethtown School Board approved the hiring of the McKissick firm to conduct a comprehensive study of the district's present level of school-age population density and to provide projections for future school district building needs and requirements.

In undertaking this educational planning effort, the firm will be building upon a prior planning effort completed in 1999 by Vern L. McKissick III, AIA, principal of the firm, and Iron Compass Mapping. Under the direction of Mr. McKissick, the firm's engineers and architects will conduct traditional building evaluations as well as a study to map student residential locations, including school bus routes, to determine student ratios for the district.

"We will be utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to map the entire district. GIS will allow us to link location to information, such as pupils to addresses, buildings to parcels, or streets within a network," Mr. McKissick said. "It is, quite simply, the latest technology for conducting a study of this type."

"The technology will allow us to view and analyze data from a geographic perspective and install it as a portion of the district's overall information system framework," Mr. McKissick explains. The technology will be blended with a range of information, such as proposed residential development within the district, to create projections for district growth and future needs. McKissick Associates will work with Iron Compass Map Company, a custom cartography and GIS firm based in Lancaster, to assist in the GIS portion of the study.