SPS seeks demographic, school boundary study

To plan for future facility needs, Springfield Public Schools wants to hire a firm to complete a demographic and boundary study.

A proposal to hire Capital AE, a Colorado-based firm with an office in St. Louis, will go before the SPS Board of Education at its March 24 meeting. The fee is not to exceed $657,240.

The current long-range facility master plan was based, in part, on a demographic report started a decade ago. The board approved that contract with MGT of America, Inc. in January 2016. According to past Springfield Business Journal reporting, the current master plan called for roughly $370 million in spending.

The report was used by the SPS Community Task Force on Facilities, which proposed projects for the $168 million bond issue passed in 2019 and the $220 million bond issue approved in 2023.

The final projects from the most recent bond issue are in the works, and a new task force could be convened as early as summer 2027, according to Travis Shaw, deputy superintendent of operations.

Shaw said two bids were received, and the board will be asked to approve the contract with Capital AE – AE stands for asset engineering – at the March 24 meeting.

“We need to ask them to go ahead and vote so that we can get the initial work done prior to summertime,” Shaw said in an interview. “Then it will flow into the fall.”

He said the entire process, aimed at developing a new facility master plan, is expected to take up to nine months.

“We also wanted to have the company do an updated demographic and boundary study as part of that,” he said.

Bruce Douglas, chief information officer, said the firm will provide updated details about building capacities, enrollment trends, new housing and population shifts.

“We monitor enrollment every year, and even throughout the year, and so our executive directors are constantly shifting resources as needed,” he said. “But getting that sense of what’s happening more longitudinally into the future with projection is a big part of that demographic study.”