Butler Middle School on East North Street is set to close at the end of this school year. Butler Eagle file photo

BUTLER TWP — Even after sixth-grade students move in at the start of next school year, Butler Intermediate High School will retain its name, at least for a short time to reduce confusion.

Brian White, superintendent of Butler Area School District, told the two people Tuesday at the mandatory hearing regarding the closing of Butler Middle School. According to White, the state Department of Education requires school districts to hold a public hearing when a school board is making the decision to close a school.

Administrators and the school board have been discussing the closing of Butler Middle School for years now, so the hearing was comprised only of a presentation from White and some comments from the two school board members in attendance.

“Sometimes when you have school closing hearings it’s very contentious activity because you have it right then,” White said. “This has been happening over four years, so I think at this point if someone didn’t know the middle school was closing, they have not been living in Butler very long.”

Butler Middle School will close at the end of this school year, and its fifth-grade students will stay at their elementary schools an additional year while sixth-grade students will attend Butler Intermediate High School. Ninth-grade students will move from the intermediate to Butler Area Senior High School, which is currently having an addition built that will allow enough space for the additional grade.

White said in his presentation that administrators’ decision to close Butler Middle School was driven by the cost of the facilities and decreasing enrollment.

“Our enrollment history has dramatically decreased,” White said. “We are roughly 2,000 students smaller than we once were, so again that enrollment decline was pretty significant.”

The hearing began at 4 p.m. and was over by 4:15 p.m.

Al Vavro, school board president, said he thinks sixth-grade students are more suited to learning among seventh and eighth-grade students than they are learning alongside fifth-grade students.

“Just from working with kids, sixth-graders socially, emotionally, educationally really are not little kids anymore,” Vavro said. “I think they are more like secondary kids than elementary kids, so I think putting them into the intermediate school and providing a quasi-secondary curriculum for them makes more sense.”

Vavro also said the money that would be needed for continued maintenance on Butler Middle School is better spent elsewhere.

“That building has served us well ... It just is time,” he said. “I would much more like to see money put into education, not into buildings.”