HBI

Dalton Walker
dwalker@harrisburginfo.com

February 03. 2010 6:00AM

The location of Harrisburg’s newest elementary school could be decided Monday.

The Harrisburg School District has targeted a parcel of land just north of the high school and west of one of Harrisburg’s newest neighborhoods.

A decision on whether to go ahead and purchase the land could potentially be made Monday. The board is holding an hour-long public input at 7 p.m. during the board meeting and will decide then if it will approve the lan purchase.

“Prior to us making the final decision on this, the board would like to give the public and opportunity to express concerns,” Superintendent Jim Holbeck wrote in recent a note to parents.

The elementary would be the district’s fourth and second in the city of Harrisburg. The land is currently undeveloped farm land just west of Harrisburg Homesites in north Harrisburg.

The location, Holbeck said, will help ease Liberty Elementary’s high population.
“The site for this new elementary was always intended to be located near or in Harrisburg in order to take some of the crowding issues away from our present Liberty Elementary School,” Holbeck said.

The board considered many factors in selecting the best location, Holbeck said. Location for students and parents to easily commute to school, land cost and needed infrastructure and location that best fits the future growth of Harrisburg.

“While no site is perfect for everyone, we found that the site, compared to all the other sites we looked at, was the best fit,” Holbeck said.

District voters agreed to build a new school in a bond vote late last year. Part of the bond was money to purchase land for the this elementary and future schools. Twenty acres of land will be purchased, Holbeck said.

Construction could start in April at the earliest, Holbeck said. The school is planned to be ready for students for the fall 2011-12 school year.

“We’ve had a few locations we were looking at, working with,” Holbeck said. “This one here is one of two we were very, very interested in from the beginning.”