The Neshaminy School Board has moved ahead with a plan to construct a new elementary school.
Last month, the school board accepted $43.4 million in bids from numerous contractors – ER Stuebner for general construction, Blair Corp. for site work, Myco for plumbing, Tri-County Mechanical, and Boro Construction – in preparation for work to begin on the new school that will be constructed at the Maple Point Middle School site in Middletown Township.
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The new school is expected to open to start the 2024-2025 school year.
The new school is designed to replace the aging Pearl S. Buck Elementary School in the township’s Levittown section.
The school district expects the final tally to come to $51 million.
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Designers and the district already have altered plans to deal with supply chain problems and inflation. At points in the planning process, the project was put in jeopardy due to rising cost projections.
Superintendent Dr. Rob McGee said the district went back and cut $3 million in costs by making design changes to the plans.
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The district took out a bond in March to cover the majority of the project’s costs. The construction will be paid for in part using already allocated monies and $5 million in federal stimulus money that is expected, district officials said.
Credit: Neshaminy School District
The plans call for an approximately 115,000-square-feet school with room for 800 to 900 elementary school students. The building will feature modern amenities and be on the same campus at Maple Point Middle School on Langhorne-Yardley Road, which sits on 85 acres of land. The new school will not connect to the existing middle school and connected district administrative offices.
The new elementary school will be designed to have grade-level pods for students and classes. There will be flexible spaces, classrooms, and bathrooms for students in each pod, Scott Downie, an architect with Spiezle Architectural Group, said during a presentation earlier this year.
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The Middletown Township Board of Supervisors granted the plan approval, but one condition is that the school district and township work together to ease traffic concerns around the school property.
According to a study conducted by Statistical Forecasting LLC, the district estimates enrollment will increase from 8,991 to 9,625 by the 2025-2026 school year, necessitating the need for a replacement for Pearl S. Buck Elementary School.
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The Buck building sits on 13 acres of land in Middletown Township’s Levittown section. It was opened in 1968 and has received no major renovations, according to information provided at a 2014 school board meeting. The only other district school not renovated since opening was Oliver Heckman Elementary School on the Langhorne Borough and Middletown Township border. Heckman was closed in 2016 and has sat vacant since.
Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
The new elementary school is part of the district’s ongoing facilities road map.
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Former school board member and president Stephen Pirritano, a Lower Southampton Township resident who has supported the road map to update facilities, celebrated the new school. He urged the board to continue forward with the road map for improving the district’s schools by looking next toward Walter Miller Elementary School in Levittown.
Pirritano said the district’s facilities road map that was implemented in 2014 and did upset some people at first, but the new elementary school project seems to have earned little opposition.
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“I think the district has moved in the right direction,” he said.
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