New Fountain Hill Elementary School details presented on construction timeline, floor plans

Bethlehem Area School District Superintendent Jack Silva said, like a car, there comes a certain point where it’s better to buy new than put extensive renovation into something with little benefit.

This is just one reasoning Silva gave as to why Fountain Hill is getting a new elementary school, and he unveiled the details at a community meeting on Thursday, Feb. 29.

Fountain Hill Elementary School, which opened in 1973, will undergo demolition starting in June 2025 to make way for a new, larger elementary school, district officials announced. Construction in collaboration with Alloy5 Architecture is set to be finished by July 2027.

The design of the new building, Silva said, will provide needed updates to allow the school to better function, such as larger windows to provide brighter lighting; more efficient HVAC and electrical systems; larger spaces for arts, music and other programs; and two entry points into the school on Church Street and Moravia Street.

It will include a three-story classroom wing, outdoor play areas, a wider outdoor landscape, a building design to blend in with the rest of the community, and a family center. The family center will provide a space for meetings, partnerships and space for a food pantry.

“When you build a school, it’s going to be around for the kids in the community for a long, long time,” Silva said. “So, we want to think long term in terms of the benefits of education — its primary purpose is to produce good students.”

Another key element of the new school will be the elimination of an “open concept” that exists in the classrooms. This means there are classrooms with no real walls dividing them, which was a popular concept adopted in the 1970s to encourage collaboration amongst the classrooms.

Schools like Fountain Hill found this idea to do more harm than good, posing a distraction for the students. Over the years there have been artificial barriers, such as bookcases, added to separate classrooms. Fountain Hill’s new elementary school will include real walls, allowing for a focused environment, Silva said.

In fact, there is a specific design to these classrooms, as explained by Fountain Hill Principal Courtney Wertman-Stambaugh. There will be a series of “learning pods,” in which the classrooms will be set up in a group of four for each grade, either next to or across from one another.

Each floor will also contain resource rooms, which will serve as a learning resource for a multitude of purposes. Special education, language services, extra repetition or remediation, and instruction for small groups of students are among those purposes explained by Wertman-Stambaugh.

“Our goal is to always offer a cohesive and inclusive learning environment to all of our students,” she said. “The mental health of our students is very important. We want our students to continue to grow to be resilient citizens and make really healthy choices for themselves and the community.”

Silva presented a visual layout of the school at the meeting.

He estimates the project to cost $62,175,000. Besides $1.5 million in grant allocations, the project is funded mainly through the school’s “long-term borrowing capacity,” he said.

He also discussed the exterior of the school, featuring updates to the drop-off and pick-up system. The goal is not only to create a smoother drop-off and pick-up system, but to improve safety for the students.

With the new entrances, some community members in attendance voiced concerns regarding traffic and parking by their own homes. Nancy Trautmann, who lives on Moravia Street, expressed curiosity on the amount of parking for faculty and staff — to ensure that parking on residential streets will not be taken up.

She said parking on Moravia Street is a “nightmare” as is.

“We did increase the amount of parking” at the new school, Silva said. “So it can only get better. What parking is allowed or not allowed on Moravia Street is something in collaboration with the borough we’ll be working on.”

David Trautmann, also a community member, expressed concern about crowding on Moravia Street with new drop-off and pick-up locations.

“One of the things that is in this design that we do not have (in the current elementary school) is a true, designated drop off location,” Wertman-Stambaugh said, explaining that not having a designated spot creates more congestion on the streets, and this new plan should solve that.

Before Thursday’s event, the public had the opportunity to submit anonymous questions about the new school. Questions were raised anonymously and in person as to where Fountain Hill students would be relocated while construction is happening — Silva was unable to provide exact details until they’re approved by the school board.

“One of the priorities was not to create a bunch of other problems in other schools,” he said. “We believe we have found a location that will be able to keep the Fountain Hill kids intact in an area in a school that’s good and safe that won’t affect any of the other 21 schools in the Bethlehem Area School District.”

Silva expressed the importance of designing a school that not only suits the needs of the students, but fits in with the community, visually and otherwise.

“I’m confident that with the team we have and the community that we have, that we’ll be able to achieve all of our goals of having a great Fountain Hill Elementary School for the kids,” Silva said.

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