Norleb votes to close elementary schools ahead of new school opening
The Northern Lebanon School District Board of Directors voted Tuesday night to close its four elementary schools, along with the middle school in name only, ahead of the opening of the new elementary school building.
Once Norleb finishes out the 2022-2023 school year, East Hanover Elementary, Fredericksburg Elementary, Jonestown Elementary and Lickdale Elementary will officially be closed.
Next year students will attend the Northern Lebanon Elementary School, construction of which is slated to be finished by mid-summer.
All elementary aged students and all current teachers from those schools will be moved to the new building with the addition of sixth grade, which is being moved from the middle school.
The transition allows the district to even out class sizes at the elementary level, as some of the schools have small class sizes and even unused classrooms, while others have dealt with overcrowding.
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The nearly 190,000 square foot building holds a student capacity of roughly 1,300 and provides seven classrooms each for kindergarten and second to sixth grade and eight rooms for first grade.
The new building also includes a full-sized gymnasium, two-sided stage, media center, two music classrooms, two art classrooms, two STEM classrooms and special education support amenities among others.
According to district superintendent Gary Messinger, construction of the building cost roughly $55 million.
"When we did the feasibility study back in 2020, we looked at the cost of building a new elementary school (and the) consolidated cost of renovating all four, which they're all in need of renovation," Board President Barry Naum told the Lebanon Daily News. "The operational cost of keeping those running for 30 years, and in 2020 figures the numbers are clearly irrelevant to some degree now, but in 2020 figures it looked like we were gonna save the district ultimately about $30 million over 30 years."
Northern Lebanon Middle School will also close, in name only, as a part of the transition. The middle school and high school buildings will share the name: Northern Lebanon Secondary School.
Messinger explained that the name was partially changed as a result of sixth grade moving to the elementary school building and partially because there are teachers in the district that teach both high school and middle school classes, and students in the middle school who take high school courses.
Because of how Pennsylvania's Department of Education's system works, those educators who teach both levels have to be inputted separately at the high school and the middle school. The change allows the district to instead put a single report in for secondary school teachers, which allows PDE to track who teaches where and insure correct certification.
Moving sixth grade will free up classroom space in the secondary school, which will alleviate overcrowding that the building has suffered from and grants room for much needed repairs and construction that the district has planned.
Messinger assured that 7th and 8th graders will largely be kept separate from 9-12 grade students.
The district plans on selling all four elementary school buildings and according to Messinger, already has potential buyers interested in all of the properties.
Mark Ferraro, executive deputy secretary for the department of military veterans affairs and Bob Hepner, deputy for facilities and engineering, gave a brief presentation during the board meeting expressing their interest in the East Hanover and Lickdale elementary buildings.
East Hanover would be used as a readiness center, also called a National Guard armory. Army units would be placed at the building. When members of the national guard have to come in for their weekend assemblies or their annual training periods, all the administration and equipment pickup would happen there.
Moving into the building would allow those units to move out of a wooden structure erected at Fort Indiantown Gap in 1939 that was originally designated as a temporary building.
The Lickdale building will be used as an outreach center for veterans, families and current service members.
The outreach center will include a national guard education center, ID center for military retirees and their dependents, and a family member and services support division that provides financial, educational, and mental health services.
Daniel Larlham Jr. is a reporter for the Lebanon Daily News. Reach him at DLarlham@LDNews.com or on Twitter @djlarlham
This article originally appeared on Lebanon Daily News: Norleb votes to officially close four schools at the end school year
