The Pennsbury School Board revealed Thursday night what will happen to the now-shuttered Village Park Elementary School on Unity Drive in Falls Township.
LifeWorks Alternative School and the Bucks County Intermediate Unit #22 will both lease classroom and office space inside the neighborhood elementary school. The district will earn about $150,000 a year in the deal and reduce the amount of money it owns the BCIU by $72,000, officials said.
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The board voted and approved the plan.
The BCIU will hold middle and high school classes as part of a special education program. The program was formerly housed in the Tawanka Learning Center in Lower Southampton and will now be housed in the smaller wing of Village Park.
LifeWorks will be leasing the larger part of the building to hold daily classes for middle and high school students dealing with behavioral issues. The school will act as the Doylestown-based program’s Lower Bucks County campus. Officials said about 15 Pennsbury students take part in LifeWorks programs.
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“The annual revenue from the LifeWorks and the reduction in fees to the BCIU exceed the actual cost of keeping the Village Park Facility operations,” Pennsbury’s Business Administrator Dan Rogers said.
School board President Allan Weisel called the deal a “win-win situation” in a statement.
Despite pleas to keep the school open, the board voted in may to close the school. The Elementary Enrollment and Space Utilization Committee recommended closing the school based on costs and enrollment numbers.
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There was concern among community members that the school was remain vacant and begin to crumble.
Officials said in May that the closing of the school is expected to save Pennsbury approximately $1.4 million per a year. The savings are expected to mainly come from utilities, maintenance and technical upgrades that will no longer be needed.
The 75,000-square-foot school, which is on the same grounds as both campuses of the district’s high school, features an open classroom environment, which meant the instructional rooms were separated by bookcases and shelving units instead of walls.
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