New Philadelphia, Ohio (WJER) - New Philadelphia school officials say they are approaching the pivotal point as they try to decide how to deal with overcrowding in the district. 

Superintendent David Brand says through their community meetings, they’ve learned the public wants to hear how educators would address their aging facilities, so he says they’re holding three more meetings to discuss survey results from staff members. 

“Allowing the community to hear those, ask questions and then develop their own options, and through surveys and meetings and discussions, we will narrow it down from those options to the one option that everybody can get behind,” he says.

Brand says those meetings are scheduled for April 10th, 11th and 16th at 7 pm at the district’s Font Avenue building.

Meanwhile, Brand says stakeholders have also been curious about how the state funding would work depending on how they decide to proceed.

“Add-on, renovate, renovate and add on, new, or any combination of them. You can potentially do a renovation somewhere, a renovation/addition a different place in the district and a new building somewhere else. It can be a mixture of those,” he says.

Brand says the community will be surveyed again after those meetings on how they want to move forward so the board can start formulating an action plan based on their suggestions. 

WJER RADIO