ANOTHER VIEW ON NEW HARRITON GRAND OPENING

October 19, 2009

To the Editor:

 

In last week’s edition, you printed in the news section a press release prepared by the Lower Merion School District regarding the opening of New Harriton High School. After reading the unedited article, I felt compelled to offer another version:

 

“Residents of the Lower Merion School District (including the Forgotten Taxpayer) are invited to the grand opening of the largest and most expensive new public school in the Country on a per pupil basis.  The ribbon cutting at New Harriton High School marks the culmination of years of planning, community opposition and litigation. 

 

The LMSD Board and Administration had the foresight to locate the new school, designed to accommodate 1,250 students, at the sparsely-populated western edge of the District.  The plan was to equalize enrollment between New Harriton and Lower Merion High Schools.  As a quick glance at a map could have predicted, this led to a divisive redistricting process.  After hiring a top-notch redistricting expert, whose plan was totally ignored, the Board decided to adopt redistricting Plan 4b.  As a result, neighbors in Narberth now send their children to different high schools, and students who could have walked to Lower Merion are now forced to take buses to New Harriton.  To the relief of all, the high school matriculation plans of the nine board members’ families were not affected.

 

The District purportedly held over a hundred meetings to gather input from the community regarding renovating vs. building brand new schools.  The culmination of these meetings was the state-mandated Act 34 hearing for New Harriton, where 9 people spoke in favor of the District’s plans, while 27 were opposed.  The District responded by refusing to air the video of the hearing on its public access cable channel and instead used taxpayer money to hire a public relations firm to “sell” the community on its plans.  In addition, 460 residents wrote letters of opposition to the PA Department of Education.  After inviting (and ignoring) input from the community, the Board charged ahead with its plans.

 

The Board set a “not-to-exceed” budget for New Harriton of $98.25 million.  When the bids far exceeded this figure, the Board again invited public comment.  There were more meetings, and even radical suggestions such as delaying the project or scaling back the size of the schools to meet actual enrollment projections.  Fortunately, the Board ignored this heresy and voted to exceed its own “not to exceed” budget, raising it to $102.9 million.  As a result, New Harriton was completed “on time and on budget”.

 

Since the New Harriton building is so large, school buses can no longer be parked on the property.  Therefore, the district is paying or litigating to park school buses at the Croyle site, the Connelly Container site, the Matsonsford Road site and the Crooked Lane site, two of which aren’t even in the Township.  Despite its goal of making New Harriton “green”, LMSD will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for the fuel and drivers to crisscross the district every day.

 

The centerpiece of New Harriton is the soaring glass-encased library.  Part of the District’s rationale for making Harriton and Lower Merion High Schools so large is that they would “provide space for use by community groups”.  However, instead of allowing the public to use the beautiful library, the Township is going ahead with plans to spend $11 million to renovate Ludington Library, located less than two miles away.

 

Community members who are unable to attend the New Harriton ribbon cutting should mark their calendars for October of 2010.  At that time, the District will open the doors of the even larger and more expensive Lower Merion High School.  The district will celebrate the distinction of having the two largest and most expensive new schools in the nation.  There will also be an opportunity for families of students who were displaced from Lower Merion to Harriton to see what they are missing as a result of the District’s $250 million capital program.

 

For more information on the LMSD, and their stewardship of the community’s resources, please visit www.lmsd.info.”

Stephen J. Gleason

Rosemont