Committee picks plan to close Shaler Area's Jeffery Primary School

After months of discussion, the Shaler Area School Board building and grounds committee settled on one plan for what to do with its five aging primary schools.

After discussion by the board and comments from the community, committee chairman Bill Couts put forth the plan to close Jeffery Primary and remodel Rogers, Burchfield, Marzolf and Reserve primaries. The plan also called for remodeling Shaler Area Elementary School, which houses students in grades four to six.

The new plan will be discussed further at a meeting May 27, when representatives from HHSDR Architects and Engineers, the firm that conducted the district's feasibility study last summer, will present the board with updated plans and cost estimates.

The final plan potentially will be brought before the full board in June, Couts said.

“I've been studying the feasibility study for about 11 months now, and one of the cheapest options that was provided was to close two of the primaries, Reserve and Jeffery,” Couts said.

“But we heard from the folks in Reserve back in January, and it makes sense to keep a building in that community … Jeffery is in the middle of the school district sandwiched between two other primary schools not half a mile apart. Jeffery also has the smallest property.”

A decision also was made to stop cleaning and repairing the fire and smoke damage to Rogers Primary and “mothball” the building until remodeling can begin, Couts said.

Rogers was damaged in an April 4 mechanical-room fire that subsequently closed the school temporarily. The cause of the fire still is unknown.

All of Rogers' 200 students were moved to Burchfield Primary the week after the fire with little problem, which expedited the process of having to move children later when remodeling begins, Superintendent Wes Shipley said.

Crews have been working to clean and repair Rogers since the fire, said John Kaib, district buildings and grounds supervisor. No other rooms were damaged by the fire, but there was smoke damage throughout the school and some water damage, Kaib said, and “big-ticket” repair projects were about to begin.

It would cost between $1 and 1.5 million to repair Rogers, bring the building back up to code and have it ready for students to move back this fall, said Charlie Bennett, director of business affairs.

However, if the board decides to go ahead with remodeling, the students likely would need to be moved out of Rogers in 2016 when that project begins, Shipley said.

“I don't think we should be moving the kids back and forth and back and forth,” Shipley said. “I think in the long run, it's going to be easier on the children and families to move out and then move back to a completely renovated building.”

Parents of Rogers students praised the administration for the smooth transition to Burchfield but expressed concerns about their children staying in a larger school, losing their school community and dealing with a longer commute.

“My daughter keeps asking, ‘What about Rogers?'” said Heather Schneider, a parent of a second-grader from Rogers. “There's a lot of disruption.”

HHSDR completed a feasibility study last summer to look at the district's primary and elementary school buildings. Several options for remodeling and closings came out of the study and had been revised over the last several months.

Rachel Farkas is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 724-772-6364 or rfarkas@tribweb.com.