Bellefonte Elementary prepares to break ground on new $55M building

BELLEFONTE, Pa. (WTAJ) — Students at the Bellefonte Elementary School will be getting a brand new school building and construction is just about to start.

While construction will take several years to complete, school officials say it will have a big impact on the students and the community. The school, which is currently located in the old high school, is outdated.

The new building will be designed to be state of the art and made for learning.

“We’ve just known we’ve been working off of a deferred maintenance list that was many years old and we really felt like we were putting good money into a bad cause with some of our buildings,” Jon Guizar, President for the Bellefonte Area School District said. “And that’s especially true for Bellefonte Elementary.”

The project is expected to cost 55 million dollars and when it’s complete it will hold up to 750 students.

“It will offer a level of safety and security that we don’t realize now in other buildings and the embedded technology and and stem space and labs are also things that we don’t currently enjoy,” Guizar added.

Some, like Guizar, feel that the decision for a new school is long overdue.

“No matter how much money we put into the old building, we weren’t going to solve a lot of the problems that we had with it,” Guizar added.

School board members also said that they tried to keep the cost low for taxpayers.

“Some creative accounting from our administration. You know, they were able to capture savings by holding off on some large expenditures in Bellefonte elementary building, for example,” Guizar added. “Really figure out how to finance this project with little to no tax increase to our community.”

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The school is set to be complete and ready for students in the fall of 2026.

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