The Neshaminy School Board last week approved the redistricting of its elementary students that will see many attend the new Core Creek Elementary School in Middletown Township.
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Core Creek Elementary School, located on Woodbourne Road in Middletown Township, will be a new $51 million, two-story, 119,000 square foot facility currently under construction at the Maple Point Middle School campus.
Construction on the school began in 2023 and is projected to be finished by the end of this year, according to the district.
The new school will replace the aging Pearl S. Buck Elementary School in the Twin Oaks section of Levittown, which was built in 1968 and hasn’t seen any major renovations in its lifetime.
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Superintendent Jason Bowman sent a letter to parents last week explaining that the redistricting will occur in two phases.
When schools reopen after the winter break in January, all of the nearly 600 students from Buck will move into the new school in what he calls a “soft opening”.
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But the bulk of the redistricting will occur with phase 2 in Fall 2025, which will raise Core Creek to an estimated 843 students. The board approved scenario 3, the 2nd most impactful of the four scenarios which states that:
- Tareyton Estates and Langhorne Terrace, which are currently zoned to Herbert Hoover Elementary School, will move to Core Creek.
- Tawanka Elementary School neighborhoods that were zoned to the former Oliver Heckman Elementary School prior to 2016, will move to Core Creek.
- To balance enrollment numbers at Joseph Ferderbar Elementary School, students living on Brickman’s Way, Walnut Ridge, Walnut Grove and Trevose Road in Lower Southampton Township will move to Tawanka.
Bowman noted that students and families affected by redistricting will be provided with multiple opportunities to connect to their new school. “Activities may include meet and greet events with the building principal and key staff, parent “question and answer” sessions and possible school tour offerings prior to the 2024-25 school year,” he said.
The district’s website stated that all students will be required to attend their new school if redistricted, including current third graders. Some nearby districts opted to use a “grandfathering clause” that allowed students entering their last year at the school to stay there, such as when Council Rock redistricted its secondary students in 2018.
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In a presentation about the redistricting on the district’s website, the district said that Core Creek will not have any students designated as walkers due to the challenging location of the school. Noted were the lack of sidewalks on the east side of Langhorne-Yardley Road and in many of the surrounding developments, and the location of the new school being set far back on the property, making for long walks without additional crossing guards.
This will be the fifth time in the last 20 years that Neshaminy has redrawn its attendance zones as part of a road map plan created in 2007 to update the district’s facilities. The most recent redistricting occurred in 2016 when the former Lower Southampton and Oliver Heckman Elementary Schools were consolidated into the new Tawanka Elementary School.
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Neshaminy has created a Frequently Asked Questions webpage to address any additional questions parents may have about the new school and the redistricting process.
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