Neshaminy Celebrates Opening Of Elementary School As Former Students Mark Closure Of Another

Credit: Christian Grosso/LevittownNow.com

After two years of construction, students, families, and staff celebrated the opening of a new school, and the closing of another in the Neshaminy School District.

On a snowy Friday afternoon, students and their families got a chance to tour the new Core Creek Elementary School, which is located on Woodbourne Road in Middletown Township’s Langhorne section. The event allowed students to tour the school before their first day in the new building, which took place on Tuesday.

Most of the new school’s teachers were at the tour, and some of them were still setting up their classrooms. Others who had already completed unboxing were showing students where important things would be in the classroom, such as seat assignments and pencil sharpeners.

Throughout the building, student musicians welcomed the new students, with different bands playing in nearly every hallway.

Located next to Maple Point Middle School, the two story, 119,000-square-foot facility features wide hallways and an easy to navigate layout. Each grade has their own dedicated “pod”, which are hallways centered around a common space that teachers can use for grade-wide activities.

Groundbreaking for the $52 million school took place in April 2023. Neshaminy School District hired Spiezle Architectural Group to design the new school, which is the same firm that was also responsible for the design of Tawanka Elementary School in Lower Southampton, which opened in 2016.

The use of bright, youthful colors was noticeable throughout Core Creek, with each classroom having a wall with an accent color and stained glass window panels. Each pod has their own color scheme that matches the accent colors in the classrooms, with blue, green, red and purple being the most prevalent.

The school is powered by a state of the art energy efficient system that includes LED lighting, top of the line boilers and heaters, and water powered AC units.

Another feature was a technologically advanced cafeteria, something food service worker Patty Meyers was noticeably excited about.

“I’ve been at Buck for 22 years, so it’s gonna be a big adjustment with a whole new setup. It’s all high-tech technology, especially the oven! The new oven is recipe coordinated. You press a button and it knows what temperature the food should be at,” she said.

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The event was also open to students who will attend Core Creek when redistricting takes place in the 2025-2026 school year.

For the remainder of the current school year, only students from Pearl Buck will attend the new school. After the summer break, current Tawanka Elementary School students in Middletown Township, Langhorne Borough, and Langhorne Manor Borough and Hoover Elementary School students in Langhorne Terrace and Tareyton Estates will move to the new school.

Once the redistricting occurs, the school is expected to educate approximately 900 students, making it the largest of the district’s six elementary schools.

Core Creek, which all Buck students are being moved to, is closer to most of these students than Buck is, which will allow for shorter bus rides for most students, according to the district.

The new school was built as a replacement for Pearl S. Buck Elementary School in the Twin Oaks section of Levittown, which closed at the end of 2024. Buck was built in 1968, and has not had any major renovations since it opened. The school had a unique floor plan with circular hallways and an open concept library media center.

Pearl Buck Elementary School in Middletown Township. Credit: Neshaminy School District

Before Buck closed, an open house was held on Nov. 21 to allow the community to tour the school one last time.

Members from the school’s PTO were giving out school merch and selling snacks, while in the lobby, the school’s mascot, a dragon, was seen greeting students for the last time.

In the cafetorium, tables were filled with many yearbooks from the 1980’s to the most recent editions. One of which included Jeremy Reiff, who was a student at Buck in 1998.

Reiff said that his most memorable experience at Buck was the painting of The Hungry Dragon by Kevin Walsh, a large mural that depicts the school’s mascot eating ice cream and fish while children play on its back. The mural still adorns the walls of the cafetorium to this day, and the original drawings for it were on display at the open house.

The mural is also a favorite of Brian Kern, who has been the principal of Pearl Buck since 2015. Kern will continue as principal of Core Creek until the end of the school year, when he will then retire after having been with the district for nearly 30 years.

“We’re all moving together to the new building. But all the traditions that we’re here and all of the experiences that people have had, we’re going to miss that, especially the staff that have been here for a long time” he said.

But Kern is also looking forward to the new school. “That new building is nice! It’ll be neat and clean and fresh, so I’m really looking forward to that,” he said.

On the second floor, class pictures from years past were hung on the walls. In the library media center, Tracy Humbert, who has been the librarian at Buck since 2009, was talking to former students about the memories they made.

“Pearl Buck is such a special place because of the family. Like where a real family. When someone has a problem or if someone needs something, every single person in this building will step up for you,” she said.

When asked what she would miss the most about Buck, Humbert said that she’s “going to miss the space being connected to everyone. But I’m also not going to miss my space being connected to everyone,” she said sarcastically.

Akasha Alvarez, a Neshaminy Class of 2013 graduate and former Buck student, has been teaching 2nd grade at her old elementary school for the last seven years.

Alvarez said that, “As a teacher, my favorite memories were the wax museum and doing things where we brought the parents in. But as a student, we did a holiday sing along, and that was really fun to have the whole school come together,” she said.

When it comes to the new school, Alvarez was particularly excited by the amount of space they will gain.

“I look forward to other people who have really small classrooms right now getting a larger space. I know that we’ve tried to use every single classroom, but we are out of space! Right now some of our specials are on carts, so they will get their own classroom that I’m sure will make their lives better,” she said.