Local Planning Committee approves draft facility plan and sends it to KDE; committee highlights four models and funding context

The Local Planning Committee (LPC) for Nelson County Schools voted to approve a draft District Facility Plan (DFP) and sent that draft to the Kentucky Department of Education for review, LPC members told the Nelson County Board of Education at the district’s May 6 work session.

James Nijhoff, the LPC facilitator, and Adam Gossam, the LPC chair and parent representative for OKH, described a process that began in January and included multiple public forums, poster‑board comment periods and data reviews. Nijhoff praised the district’s adherence to the KDE rules that define LPC composition and process, saying the district had conducted the process “by the letter of the law.”

The LPC considered four broad organizational models and used a set of criteria — student access, teacher access, location/busing and efficient use of funding — to evaluate them. The four options the committee studied were summarized in the presentation as:

1) An east‑west middle school model with a new middle school on the west side (near Thomas Nelson land); 2) A 6–12 united campus model (a single…