BUTLER TWP — Several consolidation issues were discussed at the Butler School Board meeting Monday night.

Parents spoke out about concerns with school bus routes; Clearfield Township residents talked about their interest in turning the recently closed Clearfield Elementary School into a community center; board members rejected a potential Butler Transit Authority route to Center Township Elementary School; and board members approved filing a tax appeal for the district’s four recently closed schools.

Five elementary schools, Broad Street, Center Avenue, Clearfield, Meridian and Oakland, closed in June. The remaining six elementary schools, Center Township, Connoquenessing, Emily Brittain, McQuistion, Northwest and Summit, have a new kindergarten through fourth grade configuration.

Fifth and sixth graders now attend middle school, which previously was the junior high. Center Avenue School reopened as a special needs and alternative school.

These moves have led to significant changes in school bus routes. Also, the potential sale of any of the four closed schools could happen as soon as next week.

Bids to buy the schools need to be submitted to the district by Friday.

School bus issues

Brandie Birckbichler of Clearfield Township has a 10-year-old daughter at the middle school who had several busing issues during the first week of school.

“The first two days of school, my child did not have a bus come to our house. She waited at the bus stop for about an hour and a half. No bus,” Birckbichler told the board.

There also were issues where the bus was not picking students up from the school. Her daughter has type 1 diabetes, and she wears an insulin pump.

“Her blood sugars have to be monitored. She’s on a schedule,” she said.

Birckbichler said she got her daughter a cell phone in case of transportation problems like she’s already experienced.

“I was never against the consolidation ever. You’ve never seen my face before at one of these meetings. This transportation issue had to be rushed together or something because it’s greatly lacking,” she said.

Tiffanie Hans of Oakland Township also has a daughter at the middle school.

“We live seven minutes from the middle school. Seven minutes,” Hans said. “She is on the bus for a minimum of 52 minutes, which is unacceptable.”

There are 127 Valley Lines school buses that make 3,000 to 4,000 bus stops in district, said Brenda Collins, transportation director.

About 100 of those buses were running late the first day of school.

Dale Lumley, superintendent, said the district has still had issues with a handful of buses. While the number of buses the district uses is similar, he said all of the routes had to be redone because of the consolidation changes made over the summer.

There’s also a lot of turnover with Valley Lines bus drivers, Lumley said, so some drivers still are getting acclimated to their routes.

Clearfield Elementary

Several Clearfield Township residents talked to the board about the possibility of selling the elementary school to the township for $1 to convert into a community center.

Mindi Wright lives next door to the school.

“It makes me and my neighbors truly sad to know that we will no longer hear the laughter and screams of excitement from the children during recess and on field day,” Wright said.

She said the school is considered to be a community landmark.

“I worry that you may really just look at this as selling a building that you have no further use for, but I really hope that’s not so,” Wright said.

“Because in a township with no restaurants, no grocery or department stores, libraries, recreation centers, sports teams, preschools or parks, or a playground, our school is everything to us.”

Dan Mennor also has Clearfield Elementary as a next-door neighbor.

“We’d like to take and use that school as a community center. The school has been a big part of everyone’s life in that township,” Mennor said. “The people who built that school still are living, and they need to have a place to have fun; they need to have a place to gather. The reason behind this is we want to make sure Clearfield school stays alive.”

Tom King, district solicitor, advised the group to either create a nonprofit organization to get the school or to work with a nonprofit entity, such as Clearfield Township itself.

Karla Clark of Clearfield Township said, “We are not here to attack you. We are simply here to ask you to give us an opportunity …

“We are more than willing to set up a 501(c)(3) and set up an organization to give you the option of giving us our school back. We want our children to be able to be a part of that school regardless of what happens to it if it closes.”

Public bus to CT

In response to parents who have concerns about Broad Street school families without vehicles having lack of access to Center Township Elementary, the district had talked with the Butler Transit Authority to expand a bus route to the school.

This would provide a way for parents to take their children to school if they miss the bus or if the parent had to pick an ill student up from the school.

However, King brought up many issues so board members Monday voted down adding such a route.

“We think that there’s several significant legal issues with creating a bus stop on school property in the manner that’s been described,” King said.

For instance, the only bus stop the transit authority deemed viable was on private school district property, not a public right of way.

“There’s a real issue with a public bus entering school property with not just kids, but anybody who wants to ride that bus because the route will be from Clearview Mall to Center Township School and then to the city,” King said.

There could be Megan’s Law offenders, or there may be individuals with concealed guns riding the bus. Neither of those people would be permitted on school grounds.

Also, the bus company cannot restrict who gets on or off a public bus, even at a bus stop on private property.

“I understand the rationale behind the motion and the desire to provide busing to Center Township School. I do,” King said. “However, we’ve had extensive conversations with Dr. Lumley as well as with the transportation authority.”

The board rejected extending Butler Transit’s bus route three times a day to the school.

Superintendent Lumley said he would try to seek an alternative.

School tax appeals

To make closed school building sales more appealing, the board ratified submitting a tax appeal to the county for Broad Street, Clearfield, Meridian and Oakland elementary schools.

The deadline to submit tax appeals for this year was Sept. 1, so King obtained unofficial approval from five board members to submit the appeal paperwork on time.

“Even though they’re tax free, they’re tax exempt only if we own them,” King said. “They still have assessed values to them in the assessment office in Butler. And so if we sold one of those schools, they would carry with them whatever that assessed value is.”

Board member Jim Keffalas, who is a Realtor, suggested the board file an appeal last month. He said the schools are over assessed.

“If someone were to buy these schools and we weren’t doing the appeal, they’d be paying a big tax bill, far more than what they should be paying,” Keffalas said.

However, board member Bill Halle called the motion “self defeating” because the district is a large part of the tax base, and the school district would ultimately lose out on tax dollars.

“It would be our disadvantage to lower the value of the building,” Halle said. “It could lower the value of the building, which would ultimately lower our tax revenue.”

The tax appeal submission was approved 8-1 Monday night with Halle voting no.