Seven Generations Charter School plans to expand into Rodale building
Moves comes as school set to include 6th-8th grades
The former Rodale Organic Park headquarters will be turned into a kindergarten-through-eighth grade charter school over the next few years.
Seven Generations Charter School officials last week announced their intent to expand to sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Their plans include moving their school into the former Rodale headquarters at 33 E. Minor St. for the 2022-23 school year.
The building, which the borough bought in 2015 and sold to the charter school in the fall, is largely empty, except for some space the school rented for fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms over the last few years. The younger grades are in a building across the street at 154 E. Minor St. Renovations to the former Rodale building are expected to cost about $15 million.
The 58,000-square-foot building would allow the school to grow its enrollment from 333 students this year to 552 students and 70 staff. Construction would happen next school year, and the school could add sixth grade in 2022, seventh grade in ‘23 and eighth in ‘24.
Seven Generations opened in 2009 and has a project-based curriculum and a program with an environmental focus. It previously served the middle school years, but ended classes in those grades in the 2016-17 school year. At the time, school officials attributed the change to discipline problems and other issues they said prevented the school from fulfilling its project-based learning and environment-focused mission. The school had discipline problems and low test scores at the time.
Director of Student Services Nicole Neagley said that today, the goal is for the program to feed itself. Typically, enrollment at the school has been like a pyramid, with more students enrolled in the younger years and fewer in the older years. School officials found students who came to the school after the third grade had trouble grasping some of the concepts.
There’s still a demand for the middle school grades, Neagley said.
“We’ve found that parents want to keep their children here, we just didn’t have the opportunity, or space to put them, as our younger grades have grown,” she said.
The plans for the former Rodale building call for classrooms, offices, an addition for a gym and outdoor space.
The school is working with architecture firm Alloy5, and the project is out for bid. The Seven Generations Foundation, a fundraising arm for the school, will pick a contractor, Neagley said,
The project largely calls for retrofitting what’s already there.
“We are calling this our school’s biggest recycle and repurpose project to date,” Jen Hersh, the school’s curriculum director, said in a news release.
The building includes wood from South Mountain, right down the road from the school.
Neagley hopes the school can grow crops and other plants, have its own kitchen, and have an outdoor community space.