Bethlehem School District

Abstract:  Ignoring clear evidence that renovation was a superior option, the Bethlehem Area School District decided in June 2005 to demolish the historic Broughal Middle School, housing 650 students, and replace it with a 900-student school on the same tract.  Renovating Broughal would have cost $14 million.  The new school will cost more than $51 million, including the cost of demolishing the 1918 Broughal building. 

In February 2005, Bethlehem Area School District administrators endorsed a proposal from Lehigh University to swap the district’s 1918 Broughal Middle School in south Bethlehem, directly across from the main campus of Lehigh University, to the university in exchange for nearly $2 million and about 10 acres of university land on top of South Mountain.  About 90 percent of Broughal’s students walk to school; they would all have to be bused to a new school on South Mountain.

Tom Hylton wrote an Op Ed in the Morning Call opposing the plan.

Allentown Morning Call
Feb. 15, 2005

BASD should renovate Broughal, not abandon it

By Thomas Hylton

The Bethlehem Area School District is considering a plan to abandon Broughal Middle School in the heart of South Bethlehem and build a new school atop South Mountain. At present, 90 percent of the students walk to the historic 1918 school. Everyone would be bused to the new school, to be built on part of the former Bethlehem Steel Homer laboratories site.

Carrying out this plan will erode the vitality of South Bethlehem, increase traffic congestion, eliminate walking, inhibit parent involvement, and deprive students of a magnificent learning environment — the city itself. Bethlehem Superintendent Joseph Lewis said the only other option is to build a new school on the football field at Broughal and then demolish the existing building. But the district believes the 4.2-acre Broughal tract is too small.

Lewis is following the conventional wisdom promulgated for decades by an influential school building group called the Council of Educational Facilities Planners International. Over the years, Council guidelines have been used by education departments in most states, including Pennsylvania.

Until recently, the Council encouraged school districts to abandon older inner city sites for shiny new buildings on spacious grounds. It recommended at least 20 acres for a middle school, for example. Thousands of neighborhood schools were closed nationwide as a result. But last year, after a great deal of soul-searching, the Council reversed its position. Recognizing the negative impacts of abandoning city schools for new schools on the urban fringe, the Council now advises school districts to consider renovating, rather than abandoning, neighborhood schools.

New Council guidelines have dropped all acreage recommendations. School districts are encouraged to consider schools in neighborhoods within walking distance of houses, stores, and other services. A guidebook published jointly last fall with the Environmental Protection Agency notes that keeping schools in older neighborhoods allows environmentally friendly alternatives to driving — walking and public transportation. Compact building design preserves land. Another recent Council guidebook, published in cooperation with the National Park Service, says historic school buildings can usually be renovated to state-of-the-art educational standards at less cost than new construction.

Writing in The New York Times, the dean of the Yale School of Architecture, Robert A.M. Stern, describes historic schools like Broughal as ''well planned, exceptionally sturdy, and adaptable. Those from the early 1900s, especially,'' Stern continues, ''are grandly proportioned, with beautifully detailed facades of brick and stone and high-ceilinged classrooms flooded with natural light. If thoughtfully retrofitted and conscientiously maintained, they can continue to serve us well — even brilliantly.'' Stern notes that low-ceilinged schools built in more recent decades are difficult to renovate, but ''the grand old schools have ample space for elevators and high ceilings that allow ducts and wiring to be placed within suspended corridor ceilings.''

It would be unthinkable for Lehigh University to demolish the stone Gothic structures on its main campus, or for Moravian College to abandon or replace its 18th century Church Street buildings. Why should an architectural treasure like Broughal be any different?

Renovating is more environmentally sound than building new. ''The No. 1 principle of green building design is to renovate and recycle existing buildings,'' says Paul Zeigler, director of building technology for the state Department of Environmental Protection. Broughal, with its compact form, huge and plentiful windows, and thick walls is a perfect candidate. The site allows room for an addition, if necessary.

The school's central location is far more conducive to physical fitness than having adjacent athletic fields. Not everyone joins an athletic team, but Broughal students get much of the exercise they need (one hour daily is recommended by the Surgeon General) just by walking to school. The Allentown School District scatters its athletic fields throughout the city, and Bethlehem can do the same. Better to transport a few athletes to a distant field than transport the entire student body to a distant school.

Broughal students are not only close to home, they are within walking distance of stores, offices, the post office, the library, city hall, parks, St. Luke's Hospital, police and fire stations, historic sites, and Lehigh University's core campus. The city becomes an integral part of the learning experience.

The school's relatively small size (600 pupils) is ideal for its student body, which is 75 percent low-income. Numerous studies show that low-income children, especially, do much better academically and socially in small schools than large ones. The level of parental participation is also greater in small schools, particularly if the school is close to home. As Broughal guidance counselor Vivian Robledo says, ''Open space is nice, but community is more important.''

Broughal is a tremendous community asset. The Bethlehem Area School District should build on it, not remove it.

Subsequently, Save Our Land, Save Our Towns offered to have two educational facilities planners tour Broughal and provide a no-cost evaluation to the Bethlehem Area School Board:

Allentown Morning Call
March 12, 2005

Bethlehem Area accepts preservationist's offer
He will hire architects to do renovation study on Broughal building.

By Genevieve Marshall
Of The Morning Call

A local preservationist who says Broughal Middle School should be saved for its historical value is bringing in architects to do a study at no cost to the Bethlehem Area School District.

Thomas Hylton, president of the nonprofit Save Our Land, Save Our Towns Inc., believes the 87-year-old school can be renovated and updated for student use in the 21st century — and possibly for less than the $30 million price tag school officials have estimated for building a school.

At a school board meeting this week, Hylton made his pitch to school officials, who accepted his offer only after a lengthy debate.

Hylton's organization will pay fees of $3,000 to $5,000 to have Yale Stenzler, a retired director of Maryland's school construction program, and David Anstrand, an architect and retired director of facilities for a Lancaster County school district, to review engineering studies for Broughal and offer advice about renovating and enlarging the school without sacrificing valuable acreage.

''I don't think there's a full appreciation in Bethlehem about the opportunities in renovating Broughal,'' Hylton said Friday, at which time he still had not seen the inside of the school.

Hylton's offer was initially met with skepticism by some school directors, who worried that his offer would further delay a decision about the future of the district's oldest middle school.

Building a new Broughal has been a high priority for years. Superintendent Joseph Lewis has set this spring as the deadline to make a decision.

The idea of renovating the four-story building fell by the wayside when administrators realized they had nowhere to put 700 students during construction. The old Northeast Middle School seemed like a possibility at one time, but its use has since been committed to Liberty High School students while their school undergoes three years of construction, beginning in the summer.

Whether to rebuild on Broughal's 4.2 acres or construct a school elsewhere has generated debate in the South Side. In meetings with administrators and the school board, residents have said they are torn between saving a neighborhood school within walking distance of most homes and the chance to build a much larger school on 10 acres miles away.

Lewis and several school directors have advocated a plan to sell the south Bethlehem property to neighboring Lehigh University and build a middle school on the college's Mountaintop Campus.

At Monday's board meeting, resident Stephen Antalics read a letter addressed to the board president from Hylton, who was not allowed to speak at the meeting because he does not live in the district.

School Directors Loretta Leeson and Rosario Amato said they were interested in what Hylton had to say.

''Are we going to take advantage of this service they have to offer?'' Amato asked Lewis. ''It's not going to hold up anything. I'd welcome some additional information for this board to make a decision.''

School Director Charlene Koch disagreed. ''I'm concerned it's going to delay things and put it in the public's mind that we support the idea [of renovation],'' Koch said.

On his own accord and without the board voting, Lewis agreed to meet with Hylton, his architects and the district engineer under the condition that Hylton's report would be ready for the board's April 4 Facilities Committee meeting or not considered.

The experts, David Anstrand, of the Council of Educational Facility Planners International, and Yale Stenzler, retired head of Maryland’s School Construction Program, toured the building in April 2007 and concluded that renovating Broughal with a small addition would cost $14 million, while constructing a new school serving the same number of students would cost $17.7 million, exclusive of land costs.  The report recommended keeping Broughal where it was and renovating it. To download their report, click here.

Morning Call
April 5, 2005

Architect favors keeping Broughal
Study sets renovation of Bethlehem middle school at $14 million.

By Genevieve Marshall
Of The Morning Call


Broughal Middle School could be renovated for less than half the $30 million estimated cost of building a new school, a local preservationist told Bethlehem Area school directors Monday.

Thomas Hylton of Save Our Land, Save Our Towns Inc. in Pottstown gave his promised report to the school board at its facilities committee meeting, after bringing in two architects to evaluate renovating the 87-year-old south Bethlehem middle school. The board accepted Hylton's offer last month to do the study at no cost to the school district with the understanding that it would be finished Monday.

David Anstrand, an architect and retired director of facilities for a Lancaster County school district, estimated that the district could build a 10,000-square-foot addition to the school, which is 125,800 square feet, and renovate the rest of the building for just over $14 million, including $1 million for asbestos abatement.

''We don't think this site and the building are suitable for more than 650 students,'' Anstrand said. ''We recommend that you keep it at this size and continue to serve the neighborhood.''

Bethlehem school directors have publicly floated two plans, neither of which involved renovation.

Superintendent Joseph Lewis and several school directors have said they favor moving the school to a 10-acre site on Lehigh University's Mountaintop Campus.

But some residents have complained that moving the school out of Bethlehem's South Side would mean busing all 680 students, who live within walking distance of the existing school. The extra buses would cost an estimated $1 million the first year and $300,000 a year after that.

The second plan involves building a larger school elsewhere on the 4.2-acre site to accommodate an expected enrollment increase of 200 students, and demolishing the existing building to replace the athletic fields. But Hylton said Monday that neither plan is preferable to preserving an historic building and maintaining a neighborhood school.

''You can move out to the fringes and build more athletic fields, which isn't going to benefit as many kids as walking to school would,'' Hylton said. ''And you can't replicate the solid construction of these older buildings.''

Lewis said Hylton's renovation plan does not take into account what would happen to Broughal's students during construction.

''We don't have anywhere to put them,'' Lewis said. The old Northeast Middle School will be used for Liberty High School students during their own school's renovation for the next three years, he added.

The renovation plan also wouldn't increase the size and number of Broughal's athletic fields to make the facilities equal to those of the district's other three middle schools, said school Director Diane Rowe.

The school board will be asked to make a decision on Broughal's future by the end of April, Lewis said.

Lehigh President Gregory Farrington planned to meet with his trustees in New York today about a land deal, Lewis said.

The school district rejected the idea of renovating Broughal and insisted a new Broughal had to be enlarged to serve up to 900 students.  But the school district was pressured by the community to keep the school where it was.

Morning Call
April 26, 2008

500 ask Bethlehem Area not to move
Broughal Middle School from South Side
Residents oppose building new facility on Lehigh campus.

By Genevieve Marshall
of The Morning Call

Bethlehem Area school directors were presented Monday with a petition signed by more than 500 city residents, Broughal Middle School employees and local politicians to reject a plan to move south Bethlehem's only middle school up the hill to Lehigh University's Mountaintop campus.
Kim Carrell-Smith, a resident of Bethlehem's South Side, read the petition to the board, asking its members to preserve the neighborhood school at 125 W. Packer Ave. or to find a new site closer to the revitalized urban community.
"All of us are urging you to rethink the plan," Carrell-Smith said. "You can choose to embrace and build up the community ... or you can choose to physically isolate children from their community."
The board is expected to make a decision about Broughal's future home in "weeks, not months," said Stanley Majewski, director of business affairs. The board convened in an executive session before the regular meeting Monday night to discuss land acquisition.
As of a few weeks ago, school directors were divided as to whether the district should rebuild the aging school on its 4.2 acres or relocate to a 10-acre parcel on South Mountain, including part of the former Homer Research Laboratories.
The Lehigh site would require busing all Broughal students, most of whom currently live close enough to walk to school.
"A big, beautiful campus does not make a school," said Lisa Kucsan, a Fountain Hill resident who was one of six people who spoke about Broughal at the meeting. "Let us keep our memories and our friends."
Roger Hudak, former chairman of Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan's South Side Task Force, said he originally thought the Mountaintop site was "the place to be."
But after listening to other residents, Hudak said he changed his mind about moving the school.
Hudak urged Superintendent Joseph Lewis to talk more with Callahan about another location on the South Side and to consider keeping Broughal as a second elementary school in south Bethlehem.

Hylton wrote a second commentary article in the Morning Call suggesting that Lehigh University should demonstrate leadership and work with the Bethlehem Area School District to renovate the existing Broughal school building.

The Morning Call
May 18, 2005

Lehigh should show better leadership on Broughal

By Thomas Hylton

For years, the Bethlehem Area School District has contemplated replacing Broughal Middle School in South Bethlehem, either by rebuilding the school on its present 4.2-acre site or building a new school elsewhere. Broughal is bordered by Lehigh University and a church, making it impossible to expand the current site without their cooperation.

Last week, Lehigh offered to buy Broughal for $1.9 million and donate 10 acres on the top of South Mountain to the district for a replacement school. The proposal is breathtakingly short-sighted: Removing Broughal not only undermines the vitality of South Bethlehem and robs its young people of an ideal educational environment, it wastes a golden opportunity for Lehigh to demonstrate the leadership expected of a first-class university.

On the surface, the proposal is overwhelmingly in Lehigh's favor. The university would gain an exceptionally well-constructed, 126,000 square foot building that would cost at least $17 million to build new, and an adjacent athletic field that would provide Lehigh with space for new buildings.

Bethlehem residents, on the other hand, would lose a neighborhood landmark that is easily accessible to its 630 students, 90 percent of whom walk to school. The proposed mountaintop campus would require all students to be bused at an annual operating cost of $240,000, on top of $780,000 to acquire the necessary buses. An isolated campus would make it difficult for Broughal parents, 75 percent of whom have low incomes, to participate in school life.

But in a larger sense, Lehigh also loses. Addressing Lehigh freshmen, President Gregory Farrington once emphasized that ''Lehigh is a community, not just a collection of individuals. Communities are linked by common values, commitments and expectations. Living at home with your family brought certain community obligations. So does living in our community.'' Lehigh is a wealthy institution in a community of modest means. It pays no real estate taxes. By forgoing an opportunity to partner with the school district to creatively modernize Broughal, Lehigh shows intellectual paucity, not intellectual power.

The problem is not Broughal's age. Next month, Lehigh will renovate — not replace — its Linderman Library, a building 40 years older than Broughal. The problem is not cost. A team of experts recently inspected Broughal and estimated it would cost $3.7 million less to renovate the existing building to modern standards than to build a new school with the same student capacity. The problem is an ossified mindset, fixated on an outdated model of what a school should be. Broughal is ideally sized and located to provide a 21st century education for its students, but the school district thinks it needs a 900-student mega-school on an expansive site with lots of land for parking and athletic fields.

Ironically, the University of Pennsylvania, where President Farrington was a dean before coming to Lehigh, provides a textbook example of what Lehigh should be doing. Three years ago, in partnership with the Philadelphia School District, Penn opened a state-of-the-art, walkable public school serving grades K-8 in west Philadelphia. It's on five acres of university land that Penn is leasing to the school district for $1 a year. Penn also provides $700,000 in annual operating support and Penn faculty and students participate in the life of the school.

The school district also is engaged in a $1.6 billion effort to renovate its schools and build new ones. Penn and other community partners are sponsoring forums encouraging citizens to help envision schools that will best serve their neighborhoods. Last month, they brought in architects and educators for a free, public conference on school design. (A summary of the conference can be found at Penn's Web site, http://www.upenn.edu/penniur/civic/franklin/

One architect, Steven Bingler, said, ''For various reasons, urban schools have often been built too big and too far away from the parents who send their children to them. Recent research indicates that urban students learn better in smaller, more intimate settings than in large, factory-like schools created during the industrial age. Philadelphia has a chance to move away from the factory model.''

Bethlehem, of course, has that same opportunity, and Lehigh should lead the way. The school district is rushing to meet an artificial deadline. Lehigh University should encourage the district to step back and fully explore its options. The university's departments of education and architecture could bring top thinkers on school design to Bethlehem. Citizen participation could be encouraged.

In his annual State of the University address last fall, President Farrington said, ''The only thing good enough for Lehigh is the best.'' He has the chance to prove it by championing superlative education for the neediest members of his community — South Bethlehem's young people.

The school board subsequently decided to turn down Lehigh’s offer and keep Broughal where it is, but to build a new, enlarged school on the site and then tear down the existing Broughal building for athletic fields.

The Morning Call
June 7, 2005

Broughal school will stay put.
Bethlehem board will pass up Lehigh U. offer of Mountaintop tract.

By Genevieve Marshall
Of The Morning Call

Broughal Middle School will stay where it is on Bethlehem's South Side.

Bethlehem Area school directors told Superintendent Joseph Lewis on Monday to pass on an offer made by Lehigh University President Gregory Farrington last month to sell Broughal to Lehigh for $1.9 million in exchange for a bigger tract on the university's Mountaintop Campus.

The majority of the school board agreed at their Facilities Committee meeting to rebuild Broughal on the 125 W. Packer Ave. site, whether or not Lehigh is willing to cede part of an adjacent parking lot it owns so the new school will have more space.

The decision was more than a decade in the making, said Director Rosario Amato. ''Longer than I have been on this board, we have been talking about building a new Broughal,'' Amato said, urging the board to take action. ''Let's move forward, guys. We have wasted enough time.''

More than 50 residents of all ages turned out for the meeting to persuade school directors to keep Broughal in south Bethlehem.

Cheers erupted from the audience when the board was polled to see which option they preferred: Five out of nine school directors said it was more important to keep the middle school in the community than to acquire more land elsewhere.

''Should I communicate to Lehigh that we have a consensus and that we will in fact be staying put?'' Lewis asked the board.

Loretta Leeson, who served as chairwoman in William Heske's absence, said Lewis should call Farrington right away to let him know their position.

At a school board meeting in May, Farrington said Lehigh was willing to buy Broughal for its appraised value. In exchange, the university would donate a 40,000-square-foot building that was once part of Homer Research Laboratories for a new middle school on South Mountain.

Administrators gave the board rough estimates for the south Bethlehem vs. Mountaintop location that put the basic construction costs for both sites around $40 million. Adding a parking deck, developing the lot next door and closing Brodhead Avenue could add $10 million to the cost of keeping Broughal where it is.

Busing Broughal's 620 students to the Mountaintop site would have added $1 million in startup costs, plus an additional $250,000 a year after that.

Lewis also distributed seven sketch plans for Broughal. About half of them were for the current site.

One of the plans showed Brodhead Avenue closed to traffic, while some showed a bridge going across the street to the 2.7-acre parking lot that Lehigh owns. Instead of asphalt, the sketches show a parking deck, athletic fields and classroom space.

When asked in May if he would consider selling the lot to the school district, Farrington dismissed the idea as ''highly hypothetical'' but said he would consider a plan if it was at no expense to Lehigh.

Lewis said the board's solicitor ruled that the district cannot legally take the parking lot by eminent domain.

The district's engineer, Arif Fazil of D'Huy Engineering, said building a 350-space parking deck could help the district make another deal with the university.

''I think if you're going to negotiate with Lehigh to take the parking lot, you're going to need to make up for those 250 spaces you're taking,'' Fazil said. ''Should we pay for it? I'm not saying that.''

None of the 15 residents who spoke at the meeting advocated moving the school to the Mountaintop campus, as Lewis and four board members did.

Several speakers said the Mountaintop site is too remote, and would make it more difficult for parents to attend parent-teacher conferences or school events.

Javier Toro said many parents couldn't even come to the Monday board meeting because of jobs, a lack of cars or language barriers.

Kim Carrell-Smith, a Broughal parent and Lehigh history professor, celebrated the board's decision with her neighbors by sharing ''lots of high fives and hugs.''

''I think we made our point that you can build a great school on the existing site,'' she said. ''You just need to think vertically.''

The new Broughal is under construction and will cost $51.7 million.  Now the school board is searching for ways, retroactively, to keep the cost down. 

The Morning Call
July 22, 2008

Bethlehem Area board learns it'll be hard
to trim Broughal building costs.
School contractor says it has done much to ready site.

By Chris Pollock
Of the Morning Call

The Bethlehem Area School District board learned to its dismay Monday night that it can not easily scale back the cost of replacing Broughal Middle School.

The South Side building, erected in 1915, is slated for demolition in 2009 with a new school to be erected on the site. But a letter from contractor Skepton Construction of Pennsburg in response to the board's inquiry about deleting parts of the project said it has progressed too far to be easily recalled.

"Even if a subcontractor allows us to cancel their contract without litigation, the full credit will not be given to us, due to lost profits and any work that was performed on the contract," concluded the memo, sent Wednesday by Skepton's vice president of project management, Robert Perose.

The board also examined a list of items submitted by M. Arif Fazil of project planner D'Huy Engineering listing where cuts could be made. The work on the list totalled about $2.3 million, and ranged from saving $12,000 by deleting fume hoods in a science classroom to saving $1.8 million by not demolishing the old building at all.

Fazil said his cost estimates were "rough, ballpark figures." But he repeated Perose's main point and emphasized it, saying the district would not get a full refund no matter what, and going back to restart any part of the project would cost far more than completing it now. He said vast increases in the cost of fuel, materials, and labor were to blame.

"If we rebid this demolition today, you're going to pay twice that," Fazil told the board. "It's phenomenal, the price increases, [but] there's really nothing anyone can do about it."
The board continues to struggle with the fallout from $6.5 million in budget cuts it made to make up a deficit in this school year's district budget, approved June 23. School Director Loretta Leeson proposed the board adopt a policy that, in the future, potential cost overruns be approved by a vote from at least three board members beforehand.
Superintendent Joseph Lewis suggested such a policy would be reactionary, and said the circumstances that brought on the deficit were unavoidable increases in the cost of health care, utilities and fuel.

"I want the public to know it was not reckless spending," he said.