Butler Area School District administrators are recommending that Broad Street Elementary School reopen for students in the fall of 2021.
Superintendent Dr. Brian White talks about how this decision is connected to the situation with the Middle School.
“A change we’ll be working on and studying is the closure the Middle School. We know we don’t have the $20 plus million to renovate it. We know square footage wise we don’t need it, but we have it,” White said. “At some point we have to start to transition. There’s never going to be a good moment to transition back.”
After a recent survey found many families split on this proposal, White plans to allow for the option of students currently attending other elementary schools to continue to attend there until they age out.
White has asked a team of district employees to come up with a way to make Broad Street different or unique from other elementary schools.
“We don’t want to open the poorest school in the system, that’s not the goal. The goal is to have a high performing school that everyone can be proud of,” White said. “We’re working with a team to look at some special focus area that might attract other students from across the district to attend that school as well to supplement any extra enrollment space we have.”
White does not foresee any expense of major consequence before Broad Street could reopen as Butler County recently used federal disaster relief money to make improvements to the facility so that it could serve as emergency medical space.