By Thomas Hylton
Harrisburg Sunday Patriot-News
The Ephrata Area School District is poking a big hole in Lancaster County’s carefully crafted plan to preserve its towns and countryside. The district insists on building an $18 million elementary school on 81 acres of farmland in Ephrata Township to replace one in Ephrata Borough. To add insult to injury, the district proposes an access road through a deed-restricted farm field, and it has filed a lawsuit to get it.
Ephrata’s desire to move its schools into the countryside is hardly unique. Since the 1960s, hundreds of schools in older communities throughout Pennsylvania have been closed. Often, evicted pupils are bused to a new mega-school built in what had been a cornfield.
Although Gov. Rendell officially endorses schools in established areas, state school subsidies promote the opposite. Likewise, although Pennsylvania has spent more money than any other state to preserve farmland, it has simultaneously spent millions of dollars to encourage development on farm fields. As the Brookings Institution said in its recent report, "the state lacks a clear strategic focus in doling out its billions of dollars in investment money."
This is a crucial issue as the General Assembly considers Gov. Rendell’s proposal to borrow $2 billion for economic development and $800 million to preserve farmland and improve parks.
To illustrate how much of this money could be wasted – or worse, actually harm the area it’s supposed to help -- consider the case of Warren, a lovely city of 10,000 in northwestern Pennsylvania.
There are six elementary schools in or adjacent to the town, to which about half of the students can walk. Last year, the Warren County School Board decided to close five of the six schools and replace them with a new 700-student school on a hilltop just outside of town. All students will have to be bused.
The district’s administrators said this sweeping change would be more cost-effective than any other option. But the voters apparently weren’t convinced, for in November, they elected five new board members opposed to the new school. The new board accepted an offer from Preservation Pennsylvania, the statewide historic preservation group, to pay for a consultant to compare the costs of a new school versus renovating existing schools.
The consultant, Yale Stenzler, who served 20 years as director of Maryland’s school construction program, found that Warren would have saved $2 million by renovating and enlarging three of its existing elementary schools, each to serve 350 pupils. Stenzler suggested that retaining three schools would sustain existing neighborhoods, allow some children to walk to school, and reduce traffic congestion.
Moreover, in-school educators overwhelmingly favor smaller schools. The National Association of Elementary School Principals recommends elementary schools should have no more than 500 pupils. AI have never seen any research that shows an elementary school with 700 students is good for anyone,@ said Darrell Rud, former president of the association.
Because Warren has already invested several million dollars in designing and building the new school, the project is likely to go ahead. The state will reimburse Warren for 24 percent of the cost of the new school. It will also pay 70 percent of the cost of busing the children. (Statewide, a whopping $775 million is spent annually on busing.)
At the same time the state is helping Warren close its neighborhood schools, it is promoting and simultaneously undermining efforts to revitalize the city’s downtown.
Capitalizing on a $7 million investment by Northwest Savings Bank to enlarge its downtown headquarters, the city is championing a $40 million project to build two new buildings with a mixture of retail, housing and offices; a new hotel; and a conference center in a renovated factory building.
To make the project fly, the Rendell administration pledged an outright grant of $8.2 million to the city for a 629-space, four-level parking garage. More than $2.5 million in other state grants and forgivable loans will help pay for the housing portion of the project and a new amphitheater. The $10.7 million state investment is an enormous sum for a town of Warren’s size.
City officials are confident the whole project will be built, even though a draft feasibility study said Warren’s isolated location and lack of tourist attractions "suggested that the development of the conference center project in the current environment would be a high-risk undertaking."
The draft study suggested Warren should refocus its efforts on upgrading the retail and entertainment environment in the downtown before tackling the conference center.
That won’t be easy with the advent of the area’s first Wal-Mart, just north of town. Wal-Marts have a long history of draining the retail life out of nearby towns, said Constance Beaumont, who has written two books on the subject. "The studies I’ve seen show Wal-Marts get most of their sales at the expense of existing businesses, especially in markets that are not growing," she said. It would be far better, she suggested, to entice Wal-Mart to downsize and move downtown, as it did in Rutland, Vt.
Geoff Kirkland, author of the feasibility study, said his final report will recommend ways Warren can improve the conference center’s chances of success. But he admitted the new Wal-Mart was a concern. "The question is, how do we make sure we don’t put our small town out of business? I’m not sure I have an answer."
Ironically, the proposed new Wal-Mart was made possible by the active involvement of Gov. Rendell, the legislature, and the Warren County commissioners. The Wal-Mart will go on farmland formerly owned by the Warren State Hospital. Not only is the state transferring the land to the county so it can be sold to a developer for Wal-Mart, Gov. Rendell signed special legislation removing an existing easement that had been intended to protect the farmland permanently.
Pennsylvania can’t save its cities and towns by promoting development on farm fields -- whether it’s mega-schools or mega-stores. The governor may get the $2.8 billion spending package he’s requested, but unless he has a thoughtful plan, it won’t make things better.
Thomas Hylton is author of Save Our Land, Save Our Towns, and host of the public television documentary, Saving Pennsylvania.
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