The Planning and Construction Department is responsible for enrollment projections for the district. The enrollment projections are used for both staffing purposes and to plan facilities for enrollment growth or changes.
The department is also responsible for maintaining capacity data for each site. Determining the capacity of middle and high schools is actually rather complex. Teachers are employed for six periods but only teach five because the sixth is there preparation period. Therefore a typical classroom is only occupied by students over five periods. In addition there are specialized classrooms such as art, science, music and special education, that may be used fewer periods per day or have smaller or larger enrollment caps. Physical education spaces that are outdoors also have capacity. To account for all these variables, a school is considered “full” when it reaches 85 percent of its total capacity. Schools do have the capacity to exceed the 85 percent threshold but this requires teachers to move out of their classroom to another location for their prep period (this is called traveling teachers).