YOUNGSTOWN – Several members of an ad hoc subcommittee gathered Thursday to consider possible proposals for alleviating overcrowding at one of the city’s elementary schools.

For a while, Kirkmere Elementary on Kirk Road on the West Side has had an excess of 20 to 25 students, the total number of which had been based on census data, Rob Kearns, the district’s director of operations, said after the board of education’s ad hoc Committee on Building Size and Configuration met at Chaney High School.

About a dozen teachers and Youngstown Education Association members attended the one-hour work session, though no public comments were made.

The excess student population in Kirkmere Elementary is spread across kindergarten through grade five, Kearns noted.

Kirkmere would need an additional three classrooms to alleviate the situation, but since that’s not possible, a proposed solution brought up was to transfer around 20 students to nearby Volney Rogers Elementary on South Schenley Avenue during the 2024-25 school year, he explained.

Kirkmere’s student population was based largely on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, though that information isn’t foolproof because it can’t take into consideration how many students over time will move to or from the area the school serves, Kearns said.

A few other possible solutions were looked at, but those likely would “solve some problems and create others,” Kearns continued.

No decision was made at Thursday’s meeting, at which board of education members Joseph Meranto and Tina Cvetkovich attended. Proposals discussed will be brought to the full board to vote on at its next meeting June 13 at Choffin Career & Technical Center in Youngstown.

news@vindy.com