Abington SD presents schematic design and timeline for new middle school, targets March 2027 groundbreaking

Abington School District and its design team presented a schematic-design update for the new middle school, described how community input shaped the preferred option, and outlined regulatory steps and a construction schedule that aims for a March 2027 groundbreaking and project closeout in June 2029.

The district representative, Phil, summarized the project history and said the planning process began in November 2022 with condition assessments, space-needs analyses, demographic studies and capacity-planning work. After four ballot options were developed and tested with the public, "option 2, replacing the existing middle school with a new middle school on the existing site was the best value for the community," Phil said, and the board subsequently placed the question on a referendum that passed.

Doug, the design presenter, said schematic design began in July (presented year '25), with the project team holding regular design-team meetings and completing multiple technical studies. He reported that site utility surveys, ground-penetrating radar, geotechnical investigations (including infiltration tests, probes, cores and test pits) and an ongoing traffic study are informing siting and grading decisions.

"We received nearly 1,800 responses from community members," Doug said, describing a 21-question survey about design principles that the team used to confirm or redirect design alignment.

Dan D'Amico, project manager with Schroeder Group, walked the audience through a constrained site plan. He noted property-line setbacks (about 300 feet behind certain adjacent properties and roughly 75-foot internal setbacks) constrained the buildable zone; the proposed footprint would overlap the existing tennis courts and track. Programmatically, D'Amico described a three-story building organized around "learning houses," a centralized cafeteria and library, clustered STEM and specials spaces, and separate parent and bus drop-off loops designed to reduce roadway backups. "You're going to have 2,000 students come into this building," D'Amico said when describing circulation and entry points.

The project team said they are on budget for the schematic-design square footage allocation and outlined a milestone schedule: continue design development through April 2026, complete construction documents and bidding activity around May 2026 (with bidding windows extended to allow addenda), coordinate permitting and approvals with Abington Township and the conservation district (NPDES package) with approvals targeted around December 2026–January 2027, and begin bidding/mobilization in January–March 2027 with a hoped-for groundbreaking in March 2027. Construction and final project closeout are anticipated by June 2029, with remaining site work extending into 2030.

Board members asked about survey comparators and timing. Phil and others said prior surveys had higher start counts ("around 2,000," with instances of up to 3,000 people starting a survey) but that completion rates vary; the design-principles survey was described as a strong voluntary response for this phase. The presenters repeatedly referenced the project website, 1asd1future.org, as the repository for materials and said presentation files and survey data will be posted there.

The presentation closed with the list of near-term regulatory steps (Abington Township Planning Commission sketch review, preliminary plan submission to Abington Township, zoning hearing board variances and the NPDES permit process for the conservation district) and an invitation to the public to follow future updates on the project website.