A Northern Lehigh School district feasibility study recommends shifting grades to other buildings in the district and bringing all students to a common campus.

Changes could result in a price tag of $26.8 to $30.2 million.

Emily Liuzza, project architect, Alloy5, and Mark Gallick, McClure Company, on Monday presented the school board with an update on the feasibility study.

Under the proposal, grades 1 and 2 would leave Peters Elementary School and move to Slatington Elementary School, while sixth grade would leave Slatington Elementary and move to Northern Lehigh Middle School,

The proposal would spell the end for the Peters Elementary building, while Slatington Elementary would house grades K-5, and Northern Lehigh Middle School grades 6-8. Northern Lehigh High School would remain grades 9-12.

Superintendent Dr. Matthew J. Link told the school board on Monday the purpose of the presentation was for recommendations and options.

“For this evening administration is not looking for any direction,” Link said. “We simply wanted to share out the findings.”

Liuzza said it was based on current and projected enrollments from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, based on regional analysis.

“You see a very slight decline,” Liuzza said. “Really, we’re seeing this a lot of places, due to the decline in the national birthrate.

One campus

“The goal of the school district is to start to integrate the entire district as a common campus.”

Liuzza said the benefits associated with having all of the buildings on one campus include improved educational opportunities, efficiency, and safety and security.

“This model would kind of further that into fruition,” she said. “In doing this move, we’ve kind of identified two steps for this.”

Liuzza said Step 1 would be a middle school addition Step 2 is a Slatington Elementary addition.

Middle school addition

As part of the middle school addition, Liuzza said the building would house grades 6-8.

Liuzza said it would get sixth grade out of Slatington Elementary and into the middle school.

That, she said, would align the sixth grade curriculum, alleviate capacity at Slatington Elementary, and allow for a traditional middle-level model, as a grade 6-8 alignment is more common in middle-level education.

Liuzza said recommended school capacity is 85% (21 students per classroom), and noted this would leave room for growth and unexpected bubble years, and provide flexibility.

It would call for a proposed single-story addition and supplemental van drop off.

Essentially, she said it would create a new frontage to the district’s campus

Liuzza said programs identified for that space are six core academic classrooms, some special education classrooms (Life Skills to move to this as a middle level building and a learning support building as well) and a library.

She said that based on today’s numbers, the total estimated cost is $10.6 million to $12.2 million.

Liuzza said design documentation would take 8 to 10 months, permits 6 to 8 months, and construction 12-18 months.

Slatington Elementary addition

Under the Slatington Elementary addition, the building would house grades K-5.

Liuzza said it would include Peters Elementary on common campus, as all of K-5 would be under one roof. That, she said, would see efficiency for students, staff, and teachers continue to improve.

Liuzza said identified a K-1 addition at the north end of the site to function primarily as a separate space, add onto the cafeteria space to accommodate six grades, and a proposed location for a gym location.

She noted that the elementary gym is the smallest in the district.

The building currently has 525 students and is 96,240 square feet, and would house another 350 students, 46,300 square feet to take it to 875 students and 142,540 square feet.

Liuzza said a proposed gym addition to the west with its own separate entry, separate bathrooms, would be functional for after school sports.

The second level would be the kindergarten classrooms (Head start, Life Skills, Learning support, IU spaces).

Liuzza said it would create an entry and admin space at the K-1 level, would have its own admin, its own nurses suite, and on the second level would get a supplemental library.

Each of these classrooms would have separate toilet room something important for K-1 and all the specialty spaces that go along with that as well.

The third level, would be a separate story to that and would be first grade classrooms and their supplemental learning support and their IU classrooms as well, Liuzza said.

She said that based on today’s numbers, the total estimated cost for this would be $26.8 to $30.2 million.

Liuzza said the schedule for design and documentation would be 18 to 27 months, permits and land development, 18-20 months, and construction 24 to 28 months.

What’s next

Afterward, Link said the board has several options.

“We could do nothing; we could address the state of the current buildings and the current configuration, use that information to build our ongoing kind of 5-year plans,” Link said. “We could look at the middle school addition; we could look at a middle school addition and a Slatington Elementary addition which would then bring us to a true common campus model.

“We will circle back to the school board probably at the November buildings and grounds committee meeting to extend the conversation and seek any direction if you are ready to give any direction to administration at that time.”

Director Chad Christman noted that the district’s overall enrollment is actually projected to do down.

Liuzza said it would only be by a “very slight amount.”

“Because your district is smaller any sort of decline looks dramatic,” she said. “It’s only about 38 students overall through your whole district in the next 11 years.”

Christman then asked what would happen to the Peters Elementary property.

“If the school board were to go in the direction of a common campus, they would have to make a decision as to what to do with the Peters property,” Link said. “Typically what happens is they go out to market and they look to sell that piece of property.

“I can’t see where if we were to go to a common campus model where we would necessarily want to hold onto that real estate for an extended period of time because then what happens is we have to continue to maintain it, we have to continue to send our maintenance crew out there to make sure the building is even though unoccupied, is healthy, make sure that the grounds are taken care of, we want to be good neighbors.

“I would probably recommend if we get to that point really look at working with a Realtor to see what could we do with that building, actually the entire property.”

They kicked off the project at the end of May, early June. Building evaluations were conducted at Peters Elementary, Slatington Elementary, Northern Lehigh Middle School, Northern Lehigh High School, the field house and maintenance building, Bulldog Stadium, the baseball, softball, and practice fields, and the middle school fields.