Lehighton Area School District is planning a study of its staffing and enrollment trends over the last five years to help it make future decisions regarding academic programming.

According to discussion at Monday night’s workshop meeting, the board will vote Oct. 24 on authorizing its superintendent, Dr. Christina Fish, to complete the study.

The study will allow the district’s administration to “determine the minimum professional staffing needs of the district for the 2023-24 school year and make recommendations to the Board by February based upon the considerations set forth in the Public School Code, concerning whether any professional or temporary professional employee positions should be maintained, added, reduced or eliminated during the 2022-23 school year,” according to a document attached to Monday’s agenda.

Fish told the board Monday the study will help with the district with future budgeting, determine where Lehighton’s resources are currently distributed and help it decide where it may need to redistribute or add staff in future years to supplement programming it already offers.

“The study we came up with looks at all of our core classes and the student enrollment in those classes,” Fish said. “We want to know how many students were in those classes five years ago versus now. We have started the Career Pathways model in terms of our curriculum and this will help us make some decisions about additional information we need.”

Fish said the results of the study will be presented at Lehighton’s January board meeting.