Burrell eyes closure of Stewart Elementary School

Fewer students and an aging building could spell the end for Stewart Elementary School in Lower Burrell.

Burrell School District directors scheduled a public hearing for next month on permanently closing the school that sits on prime real estate along Leechburg Road in the heart of the city.

A public hearing is required by law before a school district can close a building and typically is the first public step in moving forward with a closure.

“There’s a lot of unusable space with the way this building is structured, when you consider what modern expectations are for schools,” Superintendent Shannon Wagner said of Stewart.

Issues with the building include water damage in a few areas and damage to the flat roof over the auditorium. Other infrastructure is outdated. In some places, flooring needs to be repaired and tiles are chipped.

“We’ve maintained our buildings,” Wagner said. “They are appropriate for kids to be in, but it’s becoming more difficult to maintain.”

An architectural firm estimated it would cost $17 million to renovate Stewart.

“When I think about it, from an educational standpoint, there’s so much negative space when we could add on to an existing building at half the price of renovating this one,” Wagner said.

Stewart is the oldest school remaining in the district.

The original portion was built in 1931, with an addition built in 1939. When constructed, Stewart replaced four one-room grade schools.

Stewart currently houses about 260 fourth and fifth grade students. Bon Air Elementary — just down the street on Leechburg Road — has about 480 students from kindergarten through third grade. About 400 students in grades six through eight attend the middle school.

Overall, the district has seen a 20% decrease in enrollment from the 2003-04 school year to the 2023-24 school year.

Options

School board members are focusing on two options for reconfiguring the district should Stewart close.

The first would move fourth grade classes to Bon Air, add on a cafeteria there and have the middle school hold fifth through eighth grades. Construction would include paving and HVAC upgrades at Bon Air, the middle school and high school. None of those schools currently has air conditioning.

Projected total costs for that option would be about $20 million.

“With the additional grade level, we would need more space for kids to eat lunch,” said Autumn Turk, the district’s director of curriculum and development. “If we keep fifth grade at Bon Air, we’d need to add classrooms.”

The second option is to have kindergarten through fifth grade at Bon Air, add on to the cafeteria and build seven additional classrooms there. Construction also would include paving and air conditioning at Bon Air, the high school and the middle school.

Total projected costs for this option would be about $26 million.

School board members approved pursuing grant funding from the state that would help pay for HVAC work at the high school. If they get the grant, it would pay for $5 million worth of the work and the district would have to come up with about $3 million.

The real question, according to Wagner: “Where to put fifth grade?”

“I would hope we would have a decision on that in August or September. That would give us 10 months to build out a schedule and plans.”

To pay for either option, Wagner said, the district would float two $10 million bonds — which, she said, would be more fiscally responsible than taking out a single $20 million bond.

It is not yet known what that level of borrowing would do to the district real estate tax rate.

About 32 people work at Stewart, with some sharing responsibilities at other district schools.

No one would lose their job under the proposals.

“We’re still running the same number of classrooms,” Principal Brian Ferra said.

Wagner and Turk met with school staff several times to talk about the concepts. Most teachers recommended placing fifth grade at Bon Air, but Wagner said the school board is charged with making the most fiscally responsible decision.

“This is just the first leg of the journey,” she said.

School board President Pam Key said no official decision about the school’s future has been made, and that there will be further discussions at the May and June board meetings.

“We’re still in the discovery stage,” she said. “We’re looking at pricing and what it would cost to do repairs for Stewart to maintain it for a longer period of time. … We have a lot to work out still.”

Key said the board is taking this matter very seriously and will do “what’s in the best interest” of the students and teachers.

The district has reconfigured its buildings before, most recently in 2011. Both Bon Air and Stewart previously served kindergarten through fifth grade students. The reconfiguration put kindergarten through third grade at Bon Air, with Stewart housing fourth and fifth grades.

And it wouldn’t be the first time the district closed an elementary school.

The former Gladeview Elementary, which was on Iowa Drive, closed in 1984. The property was sold and now holds condominiums. Its students were distributed to the district’s other elementary schools.

Bon Air was built in 1953, had an addition in 1958 and was renovated in 1996 and 1997. Its boilers and heating and ventilation system were installed in 1997.

The middle school opened in 1960, and its renovation in 2008 included new boilers and a heating and ventilation system. Burrell High School opened in 1964 — which is also how old its boilers and heating and ventilation systems are — and was renovated in 1998.

Opportunity awaits

The closure of Stewart would make available a large chunk of land almost in the center of Lower Burrell’s business district.

The entire plot is 6.4 acres, with the building at just over 76,000 square feet.

If the district were to proceed with closing Stewart, the building would be closed by fall 2025 and the property would be put up for sale, Wagner said.

The front portion of the Stewart property is zoned for commercial use and the back portion is zoned for residential use, making the opportunities at the site endless, according to Mayor Chris Fabry.

“That location is tremendous. It’s prime real estate, for sure,” Fabry said. “There’s a lot of opportunity for that space.”