School buildings go by the wayside
While Butler County's population has increased from 127,941 in 1970 to 186,847 in 2016, the number of public schools in the county has decreased over the last 50 years.
Many school districts have closed small neighborhood schools in communities such as Institute Hill, Mars, Meridian, East Butler, Clinton Township and Bruin in favor of sending students to larger schools, often located on a campus with multiple buildings.
In some cases, such as the Butler School District, closures and consolidations have been driven by declining enrollment. In other cases, the moves helped the district save money and standardize educational offerings.
Butler School District
The Butler district used to have 19 elementary schools that fed its high school located on East North Street. Over the last 50 years it has closed most of those buildings, leaving six.
In 1960, the senior high was completed in Butler Township and the old high school became the junior high. Grades shifted again in 1973 after the intermediate high school was completed across Fairground Hill Road from the senior high. The building cost $9 million and housed grades nine and 10.
The intermediate high school was designed as a building that would foster open classrooms, a trend in the 1960s and 1970s in which a large number of students would sit in the same space and be taught by several teachers at once.
Gary Shingleton, a Butler graduate who had recently finished his degree from Slippery Rock University, was among the first wave of teachers to be hired to work at the school.
Unfortunately, the open classroom idea was not immediately embraced by all the teachers and principals.
Shingleton had some experience teaching in an open classroom in the Slippery Rock district, but most of the teachers at the new school were transferred from other buildings and had no training.
“You had teachers with 15, 20 years experience teaching one way and they were being told to do it another way. So they made walls out of everything they could,” Shingleton said.
The concept did not last long and the school was eventually remodeled into more traditional classrooms.
Despite some bumps in the road, the district was considered one of the best in the region then and people took great pride in working or studying there, Shingleton said.
“The school, the steel mill and the hospital, the culture was the pulse of those three industries. Everyone rallied behind those three,” he said.
Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s the school board and administration made the decision to close several of its neighborhood elementary schools, including the Institute Hill School and Homeacre School.
While the administration had a report done that pointed to declining enrollment, deteriorating buildings and the potential for financial savings, some people opposed the closures.
Butler City Council in 1978 passed a resolution and sent a letter to school board members asking the district not to close the Institute Hill School, while residents of that neighborhood circulated petitions and held “Save Our School” meetings.
“If this school's lost, I think you'll see a decrease in the value of your property,” Butler Mayor Fred Vero was quoted saying in a 1978 article in the Butler Eagle.
West End Elementary School closed in 1984 and Lyndora Elementary closed in 1988.
The most recent school closures came in 2015, when the district enacted a consolidation plan that had it close four elementary schools, repurpose one building for special education and shift grades around.
The plan closed Clearfield Township Elementary, Oakland Township Elementary, Meridian Elementary in Butler Township and Broad Street Elementary in Butler. Center Avenue Elementary was renamed the Center Avenue Community School and the district went from 11 to six elementary schools.
The district still has six elementary buildings, but it sends grades seven through 12 to its intermediate and senior high school buildings located opposite one another in Butler Township.
And the district may not be done closing schools. With enrollment continuing to decline it still has more capacity than it needs, Superintendent Brian White said at a recent board meeting.
The board voted earlier this year to hire an architecture firm and one of its first tasks was to do an assessment of the middle school, which was built in 1917 and is the oldest structure the district owns.
The board and administration will consider the future of that school and its other buildings before going forward with roof replacements and other repairs it intends to pay for with $9.6 million borrowed through a bond issue.“Before consolidation there were so many buildings and none of them truly got maintained the way they needed to be maintained,” White said at a meeting Feb. 26.Shingleton, a school board member since January, said he has considered the possibility of one or two “mega” elementary schools that could more efficiently house younger students.Having grades seven through 12 all in the same area has offered advantages such as intermediate students that are involved in activities such as marching band are able to walk or take a quick bus ride across the street, he said.Mars School DistrictThe Mars district has consolidated its schools in one area, Route 228 in Adams Township.The old Mars Primary Center, located on Crowe Avenue in Mars, closed in 2000 in favor of a newly built primary center on Route 228 behind Adams Elementary School.The Middlesex Elementary School was used as a school from 1928 to 2004. Since then, the district has had all its students attend its five buildings along Route 228: kindergarten and grade one in the primary center, grades two through four in the elementary school, grades five and six in the Centennial School, grades seven and eight in the middle school and grades nine through 12 in the high school.William Pettigrew, who was Mars' superintendent during the changes in the 2000s, said that consolidation offers both financial and educational benefits.“What it really helped is our ability to control class size. We didn't rely on population as much. You could have had a skewed number like 30 in one place and 15 in another,” Pettigrew said.Having one elementary school instead of several also helped teachers work together and create a more consistent curriculum and classroom experience for students, he said.The consolidation was also the most economical move the district could have made as it saved money on transportation, utility bills and maintenance costs, Pettigrew said.South Butler School DistrictSimilar to Mars, all South Butler students are bused or dropped off at one of three school buildings on the campus at the intersection of Knoch and Dinnerbell roads in Jefferson Township. This has been the case since 2002.In 1968, kindergarten through sixth grade students living in the district went to Clinton, Jefferson, Penn and Winfield elementary schools. Students in grades seven through 12 went to Knoch Junior-Senior High School, which is the only school in the district older than 50 years.The district moved to its current alignment in 2002: grades nine through 12 attend Knoch High School, grades six through eight attend Knoch Middle School (built in 1996), grades four and five attend South Butler Intermediate Elementary School (which was formerly Saxonburg Elementary School built in 1971) and grades kindergarten through three attend South Butler Primary School (finished in 2002).Other districtsMost of the other school districts serving Butler County have seen building changes too.Bucking the trend of school closings and consolidations, Seneca Valley School District has added three buildings and expanded others since 1968.Construction on Haine Elementary School in Cranberry Township was finished in 1968 and the fifth and sixth grade wing was added in 1996, according to the district's annual report from 2015 when it celebrated its 50th anniversary.In 1968, the district's secondary campus in Jackson Township had just one school building: the grades 10 through 12 high school built in 1964.The Seneca Valley Junior High School was added in 1971 and initially housed grades seven through nine, though it now has grades seven and eight. Starting next year the school will be named Ryan Gloyer Middle School in honor of an Seneca Valley graduate who was killed in action as a Green Beret.The senior high school was built in 1994 and the district shifted grades with 11th and 12th grades going to the senior high and ninth and 10th grades going to the former high school, which was renamed the intermediate high school.The district still has elementary students at Haine, Rowan Elementary in Cranberry Township, Evans City School and Connoquenessing Valley Elementary. Fifth and sixth grade students attend middle schools in the Evans City and Haine buildings.SV officials are evaluating the Evans City School which dates back to 1938. The school board may opt to renovate the building or build a new one on a 150-acre property it already owns off Ehrman Road in Cranberry and Jackson townships.Karns City School District has grown its area since 1968. Students from the East Brady area used to attend schools in the Armstrong School District, but that area was merged into the Karns City District in 1992.After the merger, East Brady High School was no longer used and was donated to East Brady borough in 1993. The high school was later demolished. The district also shuttered the former Rimersburg Elementary School.Bruin Elementary School was closed at the end of the 2011-12 school year which reduced Karns City from three to two elementary schools: Chicora and Sugarcreek.The Slippery Rock School District in 2014 closed Har-Mer Elementary School in Slippery Rock Township and later sold the building to Slippery Rock University.Moniteau, which now has one elementary school, closed the former Hooker, Marion, Washington and West Sunbury elementary schools.The Freeport School District opened its new middle school in Buffalo Township in 2015. The construction of that school meant the closing of the former Freeport Junior High and kindergarten center in Freeport Borough.
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