Southern Tioga board nixes controversial high school closure

BLOSSBURG - There was dancing in the aisles - at least a standing ovation - from the near-capacity crowd that packed North Penn High School's auditorium Monday for a special meeting of the board, after the board voted down the closure of the school as an option to addressing its extensive repair needs.

With declining enrollment districtwide a concern, the board began discussing closing the high school about a year ago, to overwhelming community opposition.

But at Monday's meeting, all that changed by the end of the 2 1/2-hour meeting when the board voted unanimously in a roll call vote to eliminate "option three," which would have closed North Penn High School and sent its students to Mansfield and Liberty.

No decision was made on which of the other two options, to renovate the elementary school and "reconstruct" the high school by tearing it down and building anew, which would cost the district roughly $22 million at the top end, or option two, which would be slightly less expensive, at between $15 million and $19 million.

Closing the high school and renovating the elementary school into a K-8 school would have been the least expensive, at between $12 and $15 million, according to Quad Three architect Sam Scarantino.

The board did vote, again unanimously, to authorize Scarantino to put in process a "reimbursement variance" with the state department of education, which he said in an unofficial conversation, would "look favorably" on the infrastructure improvements the district wants to make to the Blossburg schools.

The variance is needed for the district to get between 25 and 30 percent reimbursement from the state, because it has been less than 20 years since the auditorium was added to the high school in the mid-1990s.

If the project came in at $18 million, the millage impact, said Baird Co.'s Les Bear, the district's financial consultant, would cost the taxpayers about a half-mill per year for three years in a row on top of whatever other millage increase was needed for operating costs, if the project cost came in at $18 million. At $20 million, the increase would be slightly more than half a mill per year over the same three years.

A mill brings in about $520,000, Bear said.

The board already is facing a nearly $700,000 deficit in its preliminary proposed 2010-11 budget, Superintendent Joe Kalata said.

According to Jack Showers, East Resources community relations representative, the declining enrollment figures the district was working from a year ago, will be a moot point within a year.

"The Marcellus Shale is the biggest economic opportunity the Northern Tier has ever had, bar none," Showers said. "It's coming, and coming fast."

Showers said his company is spending $10 million per month extracting the natural gas from the 95,000 square mile play.

The 6,500 wells East Resources plans to drill don't count what the other gas companies, which Showers said are bigger, such as Chesapeake, Fortuna, Ultra and Seneca, are planning.

"There will be significant growth in the Tioga-Bradford area. The jobs are coming. Penn State says 107,000 jobs will be created through New York and Pennsylvania this year," he said.

Showers said a percentage of the both white- and blue-collar jobs will be filled locally, but many management positions will be filled by out of area people, who will be moving here and bringing their families with them.

"If I were you, I would be steering my children to study the sciences such as geology, or engineering, because the jobs are going to be here for the next 25 to 50 years," he said.