Raymond G. Taylor

Integrated Planning for School and Community: the Case of Johnston County, North Carolina

OR/Ed Laboratories and the Johnston County schools created a planning system, Integrated Planning for School and Community, to forecast enrollments, to compare the enrollment projections to capacity, to find the optimal locations for new school buildings, and to set distance-minimized boundaries forall schools to avoid over crowding and to meet racial balance guidelines. Implementing the system has increased the school districts success in passing bond issues, reduced pupil transportation costs, and eliminated frequent adjustments to school-attendance boundaries.

A general form for the capital projects sequencing problem

The capital sequencing problem consists of finding the lowest cost starting times for a set of capital projects when such projects: 1) are exposed to the effects of inflation, 2) cost different amounts, 3) require different lengths of time to complete, and 4) have dissimilar cash outflows per period. The problem is non-trivial when the timing of the projects is constrained by any one, or any combination of, twelve possibilities. The problem is modeled as a straightforward mathematical zero-one programming problem, and is complicated only by the large number of constraints which are typically needed for a problem of realistic size.

An Application Of Absorbing Markov Analysis To Human Resource Issues In Public Administration

rates, demographic changes, long-range benefits planning, and classroom productivity. Management science techniques’ have been used in business and industry as aids to decision-making in virtually all areas of operations (Forgionne, 1983: 20-23; Klatt et al., 1978: 75-76). Among the available personnel and manpower forecasting techniques, Markov analysis is one of the least used. In addition to forecasting personnel needs, Markov analysis has been used for other human resource administration purposes, including the description of

The nature of virtual organizations and their anticipated social and psychological impacts

Virtual organizations are goal-driven associations of intellectual agents working within the information space. The development of virtual organizations and their agents is a natural continuation of the long movement in western society towards organizing for efficient commerce and communication. For at least 800 years cities and traditional organizations fulfilled these purposes, but now with the advent of high-speed communication and rich interconnectivity, a general diaspora of commerce and education may be expected. All of the technology needed to nurture the rise of virtual organizations is in place, albeit in a primitive form. The authors argue that in the next decade this technology will reach such a level of sophistication that traditional universities and schools with their massive physical assets will no longer be sustainable, and will be replaced by virtual organizations delivering education and training with a minimum of physical infrastructure

Computer Information Systems Education in Modern Russia

Abstract Business and economics education in Russia is flourishing, as many universities, technical schools, and private institutions seek to exploit the few curricula that are capable of producing substantial tuition income. This growth in business education is particularly strong within the microcomputer specialties. However, computer information systems education in Russia still has much of the same “look and feel” as its Soviet-era version, emphasizing theory and mathematical structures at the expense of practical problem solving.

Cost-Income Equilibrium for Electronically Delivered Instruction

SUMMARY This article presents a basic cost-income model for electronically delivered instruction (EDI) (Jewett, 1999; Karelis, 1999). Systematic elaborations on the basic model are presented that explain the financial problems associated with EDI, and suggest strategies for making EDI financially viable. The basic model presented in the first figure includes dollars, enrollment, and hypothetical delivery systems and start-up costs. The second figure adds income and crossover points. The third figure adds the market share concept. The fourth figure simplifies the third. Seven solutions for moving the crossover to the left of the market share are presented and discussed: Increase income per enrollment, decrease the start-up costs, decrease the marginal cost, improve market share, change mode of delivery, and reduce fixed costs.

Geographic information and school facility planning

Recent advances in microprocessor technology have made it possible to find mathematically optimal solutions for school facility planning. Beginning with accurate forecasts based on historical data (such as those available through gradient search, cohort survival methodologies), and supplemented by future-oriented methodologies (such as traditional land use studies), it is possible to gauge expected future growth in a school system and to allocate that growth to specific regions. By disaggregating growth to the building attendance-area level and comparing that disaggregation to building capacities, the out-ofcapacity (OOC) status for each building for each future year can be determined. By color coding the OOC status for each building for any one year, a computer generated map can be used to examine geographic relationships of OOC problems.

Long-Range Planning, Operations Research, and Politics: The Case of the Commission for the Future of Justice and the Courts in North Carolina:

THIS ARTICLE presents an overview of the use of operations research to assist in the long-range planning process of the Commission for the Future of Justice and the Courts in North Carolina. Specifically, it outlines the ways in which nonlinear programming was used to provide computer-generated boundary optimization solutions for judicial districts. These solutions then served as policy alternatives as commission representatives discussed recommendations about court reform in North Carolina. The process described in this article was one project in a comprehensive court reform process conducted by the commission. As the number and complexity of criminal and civil cases in North Carolina increased in the past two decades, the emerging political consensus was that some form of court reform was necessary. A broad-based, 24-person, blue ribbon commission headed by a prominent banker was created and given a general mandate to engage in long-range planning for the courts. Similar to initiatives in other states, the North Carolina Futures Commission addressed a number of specific issues including administrative efficiency, case processing, the operation and structure of the courts, alternative dispute resolution, the use of computer technology by the courts, and access to Long-Range Planning, Operations Research, and Politics: The Case of the Commission for the Future of Justice and the Courts in North Carolina

Distance education course sequencing: An application of probabilistic PERT with cycles

Abstract A probabilistic Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) was used to evaluate the policy requirement that two distance education courses in health care administration at Saint Josephs College should be taken sequentially. “Optimistic,” “likely,” and “pessimistic” times for completion of various activities from student enrollment to completion of the two‐course sequence were used in computing the estimated time and variance and in constructing the PERT model. The analysis indicated that these activities would require more time to complete than current institutional policy allows. As a result, changes in policy and course structure were made.