At its regular meeting on Tuesday, May 17, the Penn Manor School Board authorized the administration to begin design work with architects and engineers for a new Hambright Elementary School on the campus of Manor Middle. This begins a lengthy process which is estimated to take three years before moving in to a new facility.
This is the culmination of a process that began more than a year ago when the school board authorized the administration to begin a master planning process on the needs of all district facilities. After the master plan was complete, the attention shifted to the needs of Hambright. The master facility report showed that the needs of Hambright far outweighed any other building in the district. To gain community input regarding the two options, renovating or building new, a series of dedicated community meetings as well as a number of State of the District meetings covering the Hambright topic among other issues, were held. The overwhelming feeling from the community members who contributed to the discussion was to abandon the current land-locked site on route 741 and relocate to a facility that could meet 21st century educational needs as well as provide for projected enrollment growth in the northern end of the district.