Three months of planning and reviews of reconfigured buildings at Burrell’s Bon Air Elementary and Huston Middle schools for next school year has come to a close.
Superintendent Shannon Wagner said schedules at Bon Air Elementary School were approved by the task force “by a majority vote.”
Since the school board voted to close Stewart Elementary in October, two task forces of about 20 staff and parents were charged with recommending and reviewing building plans and layouts at the schools.
Next year, fourth grade will attend Bon Air and fifth grade will go to Huston.
The schedule accounts for appropriate instructional minutes for each grade, adds in transition times for students from class to class, and a 50-minute planning time for teachers before students enter the building for the day.
Homeroom teachers also have a 50-minute planning time when their students are at specials. Specials are courses like art and music.
Wagner said there are two caveats to the approved Bon Air schedule that building administration will review between now and the summer. They may flip lunch times for kindergarten and first grade students, and review the amount of time allotted for dismissal.
“It’s simply a tweak of the teacher’s schedule, not the student schedule,” Wagner said. “We’ll have a pretty good idea so everything can be set before summer.”
The school board does not need to approve the schedules and building layouts approved by the task forces, but task force members and Wagner will present their findings to the board at a meeting March 11.
Later in the spring, the board will contend with decisions and building projects at Bon Air, Huston and Burrell High School that, in total, could cost $24 million. A cafeteria addition, air conditioning and boiler repair at Bon Air are estimated to total $10 million. District officials say the cafeteria addition is necessary to accommodate fourth grade students.
If Burrell wanted to move fifth graders to Bon Air for the 2026-27 school year and make the school a K-5 building, an additional classroom wing would be needed. That would increase the cost of Bon Air projects to an estimated $14 million.
The board would request bids for both Bon Air projects. Proposals require review and approval from Lower Burrell city planners. It’s anticipated the district’s architect, Pittsburgh-based HHSDR Inc., will submit the building plans in April, city council will review it in May and the school board will consider awarding contracts in June.
That’s all while the board also toys with an estimated $10 million heating and cooling project at the high school. The high school also does not have air conditioning, and its HVAC system is from 1964, the year the building opened.
District officials say that if they had kept Stewart School open, it would have required $17 million in upgrades in addition to the projects now being considered.
