Bristol Township Council is set to vote on preliminary and final land development for the new school planned for the site of Mary Devine Elementary School in Croydon Thursday evening.
If the council approves the preliminary and final land development for the new 1,300-student school at the 22-arce site, the district will then be able to bid the project out and eventually start construction on the new school. District officials said last week that work on the school could start as soon as the end of summer.
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Despite rumors throughout the community and posts on the internet that the new school at the Mary Devine site would not happen, Bristol Township School District officials have said they have every intention to build a new school to serve Croydon.
The roughly 400 students displaced when Devine closes this week will attend the first floor of the Benjamin Franklin School, which also currently houses the administration offices, until construction is done. While no firm opening date for the new school is set, Superintendent Dr. Sam Lee said it could be open by September 2016.
Although the school board has not officially voted to close Mary Devine, all indications point to that happening once preliminary and final land development is approved by the council.
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District officials have stressed the bond money for James Buchanan Elementary School on Haines Road and Ralph Waldo Emerson Elementary School on Mill Creek Road in Levittown have been approved along with Devine. That would appear to counter some worries that the district does not have money available for the construction.
A petition circulated the community claims that the district “does not have money secured for its building.” The online petition also says the closing of the school would leave Croydon students “without a local elementary school with no plans secured to build a new one.”
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Concerned residents have also voiced their worry that students will be shipped to the Franklin school and that will become their permanent elementary school. District officials said that is not true and they hope to retrofit Franklin into a middle school when Franklin D. Roosevelt School is closed.
The plan for Mary Devine fell behind the plans for the two other new schools in Levittown for several reasons. Work at the sites of the two other schools appears to be in the early stages.
The new school is part of district-wide facilities overhaul that would close nine elementary schools and have the three 1,300-students buildings constructed in their place. Franklin D. Roosevelt Middle School would close, while Neil A. Armstrong Middle School and the former Benjamin Franklin School, currently home to the district administrative staff, would be renovated for middle school students. Harry S. Truman High School would not see any major work done. Clara Barton Elementary School would be re-purposed into the administration and maintenance building.
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Bristol Township Council meetings in the township building on Bath Road starting at 7 p.m.
