CRESSON — The Penn Cambria Primary School in Lilly will close at the conclusion of the 2024-25 school year after school board members voted to shut the building down Wednesday.

At a public hearing in August, Superintendent Jamie Hartline said closing the primary school would save the district about $117,000 in operational costs.

Board member Matthew Kearney moved to close the school. His motion was given a second by board member Anthony Dziabo and passed unanimously. Board members Jennifer Gmuca and Jeffrey Stohon were not present at the meeting.

When asked for his vote on whether to close the school during a roll call procedure, board member Guy Monica said, “Sadly, yes.”

Monica, who was part of the inaugural graduating class when several community schools merged together to form the Penn Cambria School District, where he later taught as a teacher for

40 years, said there were “all kinds of arguments” about neighborhood schools and putting them all together in Cresson.

“The neighboring schools went out and it seems like we went through all of that for nothing,” Monica said. “We’re putting everything here. It probably should have been that way in the first place.”

As a result of the school closure, the board also voted to realign grade levels and reassign administrative responsibilities, effective July 1.

Joe Smorto will be the principal of the pre-primary school in Cresson — containing pre-K through first grade — and the intermediate school in Lilly, which will house students in the second and third grades.

Dane Harrold will be the principal of the middle school in Gallitzin, with students in fourth through sixth grades.

Ben Watt will be the principal of the high school in Cresson, which will accommodate seventh through 12th graders during the 2025-26 school year.

Justin Wheeler will serve as the assistant principal for the second and third grades, while Kristen Blackburn will be the assistant principal for grades seven through 12.

District officials stressed that while the school’s staff members will be moved to other buildings, no furloughs are planned as part of the building’s closure. Officials don’t have a plan for the building’s future yet, Hartline and board president Michael Sheehan said.

“We hope that once we transition out of there that it would be a marketable property somebody would possibly be interested in purchasing,” Sheehan said. “There hasn’t been much discussion internally about other uses for it at this time.”

If the board moves forward with option 12A — a plan to create a centralized campus in Cresson — the intermediate school in Lilly and the middle school in Gallitzin could also close permanently once the board has a plan in place of where to put the students, Hartline said.

Neither the intermediate school or the middle school will close during the 2025-26 school year, Hartline stressed.

“That’s still at this point potential because we’re still working through plan 12A,” Hartline said. “We expect no immediate action on that until we have a plan in place of where our students can be here in Cresson.”

Hartline said he attended elementary school in the primary school building and “it’s bittersweet” to close the school permanently.

“It’s not something that’s easy to do,” Hartline said. “That being said, we also have a responsibility to do what’s right for the future of our students, and I believe that’s what we’re doing right now. Sometimes progress comes with a price and this is a perfect example.”

During the board’s committee of the whole meeting Monday, Hartline said the board moved its regular meeting date up six days in order to move forward with a guaranteed energy savings act contract amendment with SitelogIQ for classroom and cafeteria for heating, ventilation and air conditioning renovations, electrical system upgrades and plumbing system improvements at the high school.

At that meeting, Mike Arnold, SitelogIQ’s vice president of construction management services, said the district received “some good pricing” for the project they wanted to lock into before potential tariffs are in place.

Arnold said the project was estimated to total about $7.2 million in September. But after removing and adding some line items, the board approved the amendment valued at $6,535,239 during its regular meeting Wednesday.

Scope items associated with a public school facility improvement grant the school received are included within the project’s total cost, according to the meeting’s agenda.

The mechanical, electrical and plumbing improvements include replacing the school’s existing domestic water piping, pneumatic control system, fire alarm, switchboard and emergency generator, according to Arnold’s presentation to the board on Monday.

Those improvements will be substantially complete by September with a final completion date in November.

Tax resolution

In other business, the board adopted an annual resolution stating, if a tax hike is necessary, it does not intend to raise rates higher than the state’s Act 1 Index, which is set at 5.7% this year, according to district business administrator Jill Francisco.

Francisco, who was not at Wednesday’s meeting, addressed the resolution during the board’s committee of the whole meeting Monday.

Last year, the board raised its tax millage rate to the index of 7.5%, setting Cambria County’s tax millage rate at 64.9 mills and Blair County’s rate at 9.08 mills.

If the board raises taxes to the index this year, Cambria County’s rate would be set at 68.6 mills, while Blair County’s rate would be set at 9.5 mills, Francisco said, noting there are only 80 Blair County properties in the district.

Raising tax millage rates to the index would generate approximately $369,000 in revenue for the district from Cambria County and $24,000 in revenue from Blair County, Francisco said.

“This is not authorizing to raise rates. It’s just that we won’t raise it more than the index,” she said during Monday’s meeting.

Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella is at 814-946-7520.