The Conewago Valley school board narrowly voted to send the Conewago Township Elementary School additions and renovations out to project for bid, also barely passing the proposed 2025-26 budget.
The board voted 5-4 to move forward with sending the CTE project out to bid following a lengthy presentation from the architectural design firm, Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates, and discussion with the presenters.
The 2025-26 budget vote was also passed 5-4.
The $87,894,757 budget (17.2324 mills for real estate) is available for public review before the board votes on the final budget on May 13. The budget can be read at the business manager’s office in the district office and in the principal’s office at CTE.
In both the construction project and budget votes, board members William Getz, Lindsay Krug, Meredith Miller and April Swope voted against the issues.
The renovations and additions projects at CTE and New Oxford Elementary have been controversial in terms of necessity, scope, and cost. A history of the feasibility study and updates, from June 7, 2021, up until Monday’s meeting, is available on the Conewago Valley School District website and has been covered by The Gettysburg Connection.
One of the criticisms that has arisen on multiple occasions concerns the validity of the enrollment projections.
Despite older enrollment projections from Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates and earlier estimates by PowerSchool Predictive Enrollment Analytics (formerly DecisionInsite) – as well as newer projections from Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates and the Pennsylvania Department of Education provided by Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates on Monday – some have voiced concerns about the accuracy of the projections.
This, in addition to the projects’ pricetag and scope, has led some board members to withhold support for the projects.
During Monday’s meeting, Anthony Colestock and Dr. Frederick Withum, representatives of Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates, presented an update on the status of each elementary school’s project and reassurance about the enrollment projections.
Colestock said that while the board could elect to have DecisionInsite update its enrollment projections, it would require a “substantial fee.”
In-house, Withum referenced historical CVSD data, the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s projections, current CVSD enrollment, and anticipated and ongoing housing development to update his own enrollment projections, which he had provided for the board earlier in the feasibility study process.
Colestock said the CTE project is “in a really good place” with permits. Following Monday’s vote, a newspaper ad requesting bids will run for three weeks. A pre-bid meeting will be held on April 24.
“Any contractors interested in bidding on the project will come and listen to a presentation on us to understand the bid schedule, the scope of the work, the construction timeline, some other front-end document contractual items, and walk the site,” Colestock said. “The public bid opening, which would be held here in the board room, is scheduled for May 22.”
The board will hopefully review bids on May 29 and announce intent to award on June 2, according to the project timeline.
As bids come in, Colestock will record the figures to compare them with the estimates in the Act 34 booklet. Colestock’s presentation on Monday included both estimates for prices currently not known as well as solid numbers for established costs.
New Oxford Elementary (NOE) is still in the design development phase. As a part of that process, Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates are conducting a traffic study this month and holding meetings with faculty in April and May. They will review the Act 34 booklet for NOE in May and will hold the hearing in June. The procedure will mimic that of the Act 34 booklet and hearing for CTE held in February.
Colestock estimated NOE will go to bid early in 2026. A two-year construction process would have it completed by August 2028 if all goes according to schedule, although demolition of the old building would stretch into that fall.
Colestock addressed the issue of rising costs resulting from President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“I will tell you, unfortunately, right now we don’t know, but there’s a lot of risk involved,” Colestock said. “One of the things that we’re seeing from contractors or that we’re hearing from contractors is that with projects like this is because with projects like, which potentially take two years, some of the material that they’re buying, they’re not buying it up front. They’re going to buy it in several months once the project starts. So there’s some of that risk on bid day, ‘Is the price going to be the same as it would several months after that bid opened?’”
The Trump tariffs have introduced significant unpredictability for contractors and suppliers that, in turn, affects the construction clients. The tariffs have also introduced confusion due to their rapidly changing details and the list of countries directly affected.
“We’re hearing stories that sometimes contractors, sub-contractors, and materials suppliers are only holding their numbers for a day or so because of the risk and uncertainty, whereas before, when there wasn’t that uncertainty, they could hold their prices for a few months,” Colestock said. “With a public bid, contracts have to submit, whatever that price is that they submit on bid day, that is the price of the work. So they can’t go back and ask you for a change order. We’re experiencing this increase in material cost.”
Colestock said the Trump tariffs are affecting the cost of multiple areas.
“What they’ll do is they would potentially increase that cost on bid day just because of the uncertainty of the market,” Colestock said. “We are hearing that there’s the potential for an increase in materials such as steel, aluminum, door hardware, and sheet metal that would impact electrical and HVAC construction. One of the things that we’re trying to plan, depending on the time frame of the project, is a 2%-3% construction cost increase for new construction, but if it’s an addition and renovations project, it would be about a 5% increase.”
With NOE including more new construction, Colestock said that the increase will be factored into the Act 34 booklet that includes cost estimates.
Colestock said there is no way of truly estimating the costs.
“We’re already locked in with our Act 34 cost estimate for the CTE project, but some of this we just don’t know where it is,” Colestock said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty and the cost of the project is going to be the cost of the project on bid day. It could really change from day to day, from week to week. A lot of the prime contractors, they’re really impacted by the numbers from their subcontractors, and if you come to our bid opening for CTE, what you’ll end up seeing is all of these contractors will be parked in their cars outside up until the time the bids are due because they’re still receiving numbers, up until the last minute, from subcontractors.”
Given the pricing of other recent projects the firm is working on, Colestock said Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates is optimistic about the pricing for CTE. But NOE is further out.
“We’ve had some recent projects that have had very successful bids that have been on budget or under budget, and that’s what we’re hoping for with CTE,” Colestock said. “But the NOE project, I would advise you that this is one thing that we need to factor in with the potential for the material cost increase from the tariffs.”
Withum then went over the district’s enrollment projections and explained the projection process. The projections were completed three years ago.
“The important thing to understand in any of these enrollment projections: the base projections look at how many kids you’ve had in the past and they use that as a model for how many kids you’re going to have in the future,” Withum said. “In that model, there’s an assumption that the rate at which houses are going to be built in the future is the same rate at which houses were built in the past. And what we found out through Decision InSite, followed by extensive follow-up work by Dr. Sharon Perry, is that there were more homes slated to be built in the townships and boroughs that comprise your community than there had been historically. So what happened then (was) DecisionInsite went in and they made an adjustment to your enrollment projections to add in that extra amount of housing.”
Likewise, Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates did the same in-house. DecisionInsite’s projections included aggressive, moderate and conservative estimates, and the district opted to use an average of the estimates, coming to a need for 69 classrooms between both NOE and CTE to accommodate the anticipated future students.
After that, Withum said the district and design firm met with staff and faculty to verify the needs, including rising special education needs. Moving through the schematic design process, the district landed on 64 classrooms.
Recently, the board discussed revisiting the projections both to confirm they are still on track before proceeding with construction and to assuage doubts.
The same housing developments DecisionInsite factored into their projections are still happening, just later than DecisionInsite factored in, according to Withum. This was, in part, due to delays, but also due to DecisinoInsite using a national average for construction time while the actual construction process is taking longer.
For Monday’s update, Withum said he re-ran the enrollment projections but factored in 8 years for the housing developments’ construction completion compared to the 5 years (national average) that DecisionInsite used. They could be completed earlier than 8 years, Withum noted.
Withum also referenced projections from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, which he said are less accurate.
“We are estimating now that you should plan to serve 1,114 kindergarten through 3rd graders in the two buildings, utilizing 1,226 seats in 61 general classrooms, not 64 general classrooms,” Withum said. “Again, with the fact that it’s two buildings, we’re saying that you’re three classrooms short, divided over two buildings. So you’re one and a half classrooms based strictly on the numbers.”
Since you “architecturally can’t build half a classroom,” and the projection estimates are so close to the original ones, Withum advised caution as the district is “kind of right in that sweet spot” between over-building and under-building for its anticipated needs.
“You don’t want to open in 2028 and find out that, ‘Oh my gosh, everything swung the other way. The original estimates are now more correct than they were when we went into the bid. Now we’re going to be a classroom short,” Withum said. “Do you want to roll out modulars behind a brand-new building? If you had five or 10 extra classrooms I think we’d all be here saying, ‘Let’s start lopping off classrooms.’”
Krug criticized Withum’s projections and said she looked at past enrollment data but did not understand how the projections anticipate a total of just over 1,100 students in the upcoming years. Krug also argued that Colestock did not thoroughly explain the breakdown of the construction cost estimates for both schools to her. She asked what program Colestock used to create the cost estimates.
The Act 34 booklet includes blanks and a formula for districts to use and reach a maximum construction cost. Colestock said the figures plugged in are from other projects and used to design the estimate.
“It’s not a program,” Colestock said. “It’s based on actual construction pricing that we get from projects of similar size and scope.”
Colestock said price increases to date have been a result of scope changes to the project.
Krug said she doubts whether actual enrollment will reach the enrollment projections and questioned why the district had higher enrollment in the past utilizing the same space.
Board member Jeffrey Kindschuh said increasing numbers of special education students as well as the space they utilize are a significant factor in need for expansion.
Superintendent Sharon Perry backed him up.
“There are guidelines that we need to follow, and you know, again, that these projects are not just about numbers,” Perry said. “They are about updated facilities and meeting the very specific needs of our rising education population of students and the necessary staff. So, how we’re currently functioning is not appropriate.”
While the elementary schools have made do with their space, it has been far from ideal, according to the superintendent.
“We’re grandfathered in, you know, with our facilities, but it was a guiding principle of the board to rectify that, and it was to bring everything, each of our buildings, up to code,” Perry said. “And part of which is specific to special education. We do have a lot of work to do in order to serve our buildings better than our buildings are currently enabling us to do. We are currently doing the best we can with what we have. However, there’s so much more work that needs to be done.”
Ultimately, the board narrowly approved putting the project out to bid. It will review bid offers before proceeding.
Kindschuh announced that the board held an executive session before the open meeting in order to talk about personnel and student issues.
The board will hold a study session at 7 p.m. Monday, May 5.
A regular board meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Monday, May 12.
Imari Scarbrough is a freelance journalist. She was a staff newspaper reporter for five years before becoming a freelancer in 2017. She has written on crime, environmental issues, severe weather events, local and regional government and more.
You can visit her website at ImariJournal.com.