District eyes 30 acres for new school
EAST PIKELAND » The Phoenixville School Board will hold a special public meeting Thursday, Aug. 16, regarding the potential purchase of 29.5 acres of land at 622 Hare’s Hill Road.
The hearing starts at 6:45 p.m. and will be held in the meeting room at 386 City Line Ave.
Part of the reason for the meeting is to solicit public comment on the proposed purchase.
The district, which just finished construction of a new elementary school, wants to buy the land to build another one, according to a
public notice in both The Mercury and on the school district website.
The regular school board meeting will follow the special meeting.
According to Google Earth, the property is an open field across Hare’s Hill Road from a housing development.
Just last year, the district opened the Manavon Elementary School/Phoenixville Area Early Learning Center.
Even as it opened, Phoenixville Schools Superintendent Alan Fegley was warning the school board about steadily increasing enrollment in the early grades.
It took 21 months for the 152,000-square-foot combined $60 million facility to be built on land that was once Meadow Brook Golf Club in Schuylkill Township.
Even as the new school was being planned back in 2014, enrollment projections required the capacity at the new building, which replaces East Pikeland Elementary School and the kindergarten center, to increase from 1,100 to as high as 1,359.
Attempts to contact Fegley and School Board President Lisa Longo for more information before the meeting about the land purchase and any school that might be planned for it were unsuccessful.