The Lewisburg Area School District wants to build a high school on Newman Rd. in Kelly Township and abandon the existing facility at the corner of Rt. 15 and Market St. 

The current site provides students with the opportunity to walk downtown to study or work after school, access to Bucknell University campus, and in the future will be walkable to the new Buffalo Valley Recreation complex. 

Currently the school board raises taxes almost every year (30% since 2006) to manage the district budget, which does not  include any bussing for after school activities. A move to Newman Rd. will require bussing 20% more students to school every day (these students are currently able to walk to the downtown location).

When the school board reviewed their options in 2010, the architect quoted roughly $32-37M to build a new school, and almost $30M to add on to and renovate the existing school to make it almost identical to the capacity and layout of the new construction.

In 2009 the school board noted there would be significant increases in enrollments, necessitating the larger school. In reality, enrollments have been flat since 2000. 

Much has changed since 2009. The state of PA has de-funded the program that provided reimbursements for school construction (the PlanCon process). In 2012 the EPA put out school siting guidelines that explicitly recommend keeping schools in densely populated, walkable locations and not moving schools to locations that promote sprawl. There have been two super-storms, the rebuilding from which has caused the increase in the cost of construction materials to far outpace inflation. And Midd-West happened, a complete disaster in a neighboring district.