New construction costs nearly twice as much as renovations/additions

Between October 2003 and December 2006, the
Pennsylvania Department of Education approved 33 new school construction projects and 94 construction projects involving renovations and/or additions to existing schools.

All renovated school buildings must be brought up to code and will have the same life expectancy of a new school.

The average cost, per square foot, of new schools is nearly twice the cost of renovations and additions, if all project costs are considered.

New Schools: $212.99 sq. ft.
Renovations/Additions:
$114.62 sq. ft.

Click here for the list of projects

Case studies

All across Pennsylvania, community groups are struggling to preserve existing neighborhood schools or create new ones.   Unfortunately, many groups have lost their  battles -- magnificent buildings like Ambridge Area High School and Altoona’s Roosevelt Junior High School were demolished to make way for vastly inferior replacements.

But others have succeeded.  For example, citizens in Hazleton won a decade-long battle to renovate the long-abandoned 1926 Hazleton High School as an elementary school.  Palmerton activists persuaded their school board to purchase and renovate a 1920s laboratory building in the heart of their town for an elementary school/administration building.

Residents of Saltsburg saved their high school at the eleventh hour by running a write-in campaign to elect new members to the Blairsville-Saltsburg School District who killed a consolidation project that would have forced Saltsburg students to spend up to two hours daily on a bus going to Blairsville High School.

Here are some of their stories.