Board considers converting existing buildings to reduce high‑school addition costs; timing and redistricting cited as hurdles

The Central Bucks School District board discussed an alternative proposal Feb. 20 that would use existing buildings to accommodate ninth‑grade realignment instead of building multi‑million‑dollar additions at the three high schools.

Board member Mr. Kimikata framed the idea as a cost‑saving and space‑efficiency exercise. He said the district is planning several capital projects, including high school realignment estimated at $45 million–$50 million for additions, an “update the 8” elementary project estimated at $240 million and a 5.6‑million dollar addition at Mill Creek. Kimikata said the district’s combined functional capacity is about 22,000 students; applying the district’s 85% utilization target yields roughly 19,000 functional slots while current enrollment is just under 17,000 — a buffer of about 2,000 seats on paper.

Kimikata’s proposal would convert Tohicken to a high school and Groveland — the district’s largest elementary school and adjacent to Tohicken — to a middle school, shifting grade patterns so ninth graders could be accommodated without building additions at the three high schools. He said on paper the math “seems to work” and estimated potential savings compared with adding new high‑school wings.

Why it matters: the proposal could reduce near‑term capital outlays and interest costs tied to bond financings, but it would require district‑wide redistricting, alterations to transportation routes and significant building scans and retrofits. Board members said the proposal also could push the realignment timeline back by roughly two years and could require temporarily increasing elementary class sizes during the transition.

District response and next steps: Dr. Yanni described the district’s note on the idea as a quick brainstorm and said a comprehensive evaluation would require outside consultants — a demographer, transportation consultant and facilities engineers — to assess building retrofits, parity among high schools and bus‑route impacts. He cautioned that the district does not have in‑house capacity to complete that study quickly and warned the study itself might not produce a viable path, in which case the district would have lost time and delayed needed projects.

Board concerns: Several board members voiced concerns. Miss Foley and others warned that wholesale redistricting is contentious and disruptive to families; Miss Sandanowicz and others focused on the operational difficulty of moving many students, particularly in the district’s more densely populated southern feeder patterns. Board members also noted that converting Groveland would require attention to gym size, locker rooms, toilet rooms, field access and course‑specific space such as family and consumer science and labs.

Outcome: After discussion the board indicated it did not want to move the proposal into a committee study to engage consultants. Several members praised the idea as useful thinking but said the timing, operational complexity and potential community disruption outweighed the possible savings. No formal vote to pursue the conversion study was taken at the Feb. 20 meeting.

Ending: Board members agreed the district must address aging infrastructure and that alternatives should be considered, but they declined to initiate consultant work on the conversion option at this time. Several members emphasized the need to preserve district property and flexibility for future demographic shifts.