PINCONNING — The Pinconning Area School District Board of Education is in the process of evaluating two elementary schools and plans to close one at the end of the 2009-2010 school year.

“April would be the earliest,” Superintendent Darren Kroczaleski said about the soonest they would pick an elementary school to close.

The board’s site committee is evaluating Linwood Elementary and Mount Forest Elementary and walked through one of the two schools this week. Kroczaleski said the committee hopes to look at the other school sometime in the next week.

He said the committee is looking at a variety of factors at each school: the year built, square feet, number of classrooms, type of heating system, parking lot, roofs, interior condition, annual utility cost, enrollment and capacity.

Kroczaleski said the school closing is not on the agenda for the next school board meeting, but the site committee will be putting together a report to present to the board once they are finished evaluating the two elementary schools.

PASD has been discussing more ways to cut costs, and it has already eliminated teaching and administrative positions, changed to a single bus route system and frozen staff wages among many other cuts, said Brad Mason, director of business and operations for PASD, at a school board meeting Jan. 25.

Mason also said that the elementary school buildings are only being filled to 60 percent capacity.

The plan to close an elementary school was discussed at the last board meeting Feb. 22, and the next PASD Board of Education meeting is March 8.