HAZLETON, LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — A school district in Luzerne County is in desperate need of expanding. Its student population continues to grow each year but the space to hold them hasn't kept up.
On Thursday, more plans were discussed to try and fix the problem.
28/22 News Reporter Gianna Galli was in the Hazleton Area School District with some of the plans that school board members are considering.
There are thousands of students attending Hazleton Area School District and officials say that number will only get larger.
On Thursday, school board members unveiled four options they say will fix their overpopulation problem.
Hazleton Area School District holds thousands of students and it's only getting larger.
"We need more schools. More school capacity," said Eileen Kishbaugh.
School board members held a public meeting Thursday night to talk about just that.
In fact, four options are on the table to build a new school building to help fit the growing population of students.
"Because it's growing so rapidly we don't have the capacity to be able to absorb additional students at the rate that they are coming in," said Hazleton Area School District Superintendent Brian Uplinger.
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Uplinger has been with the district for seven years and says when he first started there were about 11,000 students and now that's up to more than 13,000.
The school district is made up of five high schools and 10 elementary/middle schools.
A new cyber program has increased from 70 to 800 students and graduating class sizes are around 1,000.
"There's a lot of people in the hallway. I don't like it because it's very crowded and hard to get around," said eighth grader Miguel Comes.
In 2018, the district converted the pools and libraries into additional classrooms in elementary and middle schools, but it's still not enough.
The new building can potentially become a K through eight, or one through five elementary/middle holding about 1,800 students, or an intermediate seventh and eighth-grade school holding roughly 2,100.
"It's going to change a lot. More kids are going to have more opportunities coming to the schools here," said Heights Terrace Elementary Middle School seventh-grader Jayron Mateo.
Uplinger hopes that the decision can be made sooner rather than later because this trend is only continuing.
"The number is continuing to grow and we need to be able to switch things around and move things up a little bit rotate classes add students to classes and things of that nature to make sure we are educating the students as best as we can," Uplinger added.
Uplinger would like to see a decision get made by the end of June and predicts to be in the new building by the 2028 to 2029 school year.
District officials did not give 28/22 News a price as to what this new building would cost because the cost would vary on whichever plan is chosen.
