PENN TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Penn-Trafford School District has eight buildings.
There is a high school, two middle schools, and five elementary schools.
Recently, the board discussed closing one or two of those buildings.
“Every year we keep asking our taxpayers to fund our school system, so this discussion stemmed from that. Seeing our financial picture, our financial outlook, and looking at our past years as well,” Penn-Trafford school board vice president Dr. Bryan L. Kline said.
Kline says the board will see two plans at their Oct. 5 meeting outlining the possible closure of some of their school buildings.
“Our responsibility simply isn’t to preserve buildings because they’ve always been there. Our responsibility is to provide an excellent education for our students while being responsible with taxpayer dollars,” Kline said.
He said the conversation about closures is in the early stages and they’d love to hear the public opinion at their upcoming meeting.
“Public input is what we are looking for at this juncture. It’s great to see residents come to our meetings and voice their opinions. Let us know how this is going to impact them. What their thoughts are, because it’s very well possible that we might get a better idea from the public than we come up with ourselves,” Kline said.
Parents and grandparents are not surprised but are curious about how this could impact their students, including Glenn Stauffer, a grandparent to a student.
“There is a lot less kids, so if they can condense a school, then that might be a good thing because we don’t need to pay the bills for heating and all of that. However, there’s the other side of it, which is whether or not they have to be transported more distance too,” Stauffer said.
Jessica Comer, a parent, also commented.
“Everybody’s feeling the pinch with money these days, even school districts. They don’t want to raise taxes too much because that’s taking more money out of everybody’s pockets and there’s only so many things they can do to help people save money before it really starts to affect the school districts,” Comer said.
Kline says nothing is off the table and they will continue to put the students’ education first.
The next meeting will be Oct. 5 at 7 p.m. at Penn Trafford High School.
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