Saint Clair May Break from Pottsville Area High School; Reopening Own High School a Future Possibility

Reopening Saint Clair Area High School is still on the table, but for now, district officials are focused on finding a new high school for their students as tensions grow with Pottsville Area School District.

Directors at Saint Clair Area School District have been advised to seek Requests for Proposal (RFPs) from other districts in Schuylkill County as an alternative to sending graduating 8th grade students to Pottsville Area High School.

An official RFP could be voted on by school directors at Saint Clair Area as early as next Wednesday (June 4). If Saint Clair receives a deal it believes is fair from another district and they choose to exercise a two-year opt-out clause in their deal with Pottsville Area, students currently advancing from seventh grade in the 2024-25 term could be attending a school other than Pottsville Area.

Students currently in eighth grade now would still attend Pottsville Area for ninth grade. And Saint Clair Area students currently enrolled at Pottsville Area High School would have the option of staying there, too.

Stalemate in Negotiations

Since the late-1980s, when Saint Clair Area closed its high school, students have mostly graduated from Pottsville Area School District.

However, during a Town Hall meeting Tuesday evening at Saint Clair Area Elementary/Middle School, school officials expressed frustration with a stalemate between them and officials at Pottsville Area.

Saint Clair Area believes it’s no longer getting a good deal financially from Pottsville.

School board President Michael Holobetz said Pottsville Area insists on only offering Saint Clair Area a flat fee rate to continue sending students there. That flat fee keeps going up but the number of students leaving Saint Clair to attend Pottsville Area after eighth grade continues to drop.

He added that it’s Saint Clair’s stance that any flat fee-based long-term deal with Pottsville Area should include some sort of discount.

Saint Clair Area says fewer and fewer students graduating from its eighth grade are choosing to attend Pottsville Area High School, opting for alternatives like Nativity BVM, other public schools, and cyber schools.

For this current term, Saint Clair Area paid Pottsville Area $1.6 million to send students there. Next school term, it will be $1.8 million, and in 2026-27, it’s set for $1.9 million.

“A lot of our kids are choosing not to go to Pottsville,” Holobetz said.

Pottsville Area does not want to negotiate a long-term deal with Saint Clair Area unless a merger of the schools is part of the talks, officials said Tuesday. And Pottsville Area apparently does not want to charge a per-student tuition-based fee like Saint Clair Area is likely going to seek.

Holobetz added, “In the negotiations with Pottsville, they were unwilling to offer us a tuition-based agreement with attaching an agreement for us to merge with them. Our board is reluctant to agree to a merger. We did not want that to be attached to any long-term agreement with Pottsville.”

Feasibility Study

Bronson Stone, the director of educational facilities planning at EI Associates, of Harrisburg, said Saint Clair Area should seek RFPs for a per-student, tuition-based fee from Schuylkill County school districts, including Pottsville Area, if it were to change its tune on that sticking point.

Stone’s firm was hired by Saint Clair Area to conduct a feasibility study for the future of Saint Clair students. Part of that study was to explore alternatives to Pottsville Area School District and the possibility of reopening Saint Clair’s own high school again.

Right now, Stone said reopening Saint Clair Area High School is not feasible but advised that eyes and ears should be kept wide open in case the opportunity presents itself. Stone said that no properties or land exist within the district to either build a new school or renovate an existing facility.

In the interim, an RFP should be sent to other school districts in Schuylkill County to see if Saint Clair Area can get a better deal than it’s currently getting from Pottsville Area.

North Schuylkill, Schuylkill Haven Area, and Tamaqua Area were discussed as possibilities.

The Cost of Reopening Saint Clair Area High School

The biggest expense associated with reopening Saint Clair Area High School is the building and land. Directors at Saint Clair Area believe they have the money to staff such a facility.

However, building or renovating would come at a significant, up-front cost and would involve a bond that must be repaid over 20 years.

Despite that cost, the 100 or so people in attendance at Tuesday’s Town Hall seemed to mostly indicate that this is the route they wanted school officials to explore, even saying it’s worth burdening the expense to regain a community identity it feels was lost when the old high school closed.

The last graduating class from Saint Clair Area was in 1989.

Here’s a breakdown of the estimated costs to build a new Saint Clair Area High School, according to the EI Associates study:

For a grades 9-12 building:

• $38 million (which does not include the cost of land): A 20-year bond at 4.5% interest would equal a yearly payment of approximately $2.8 million. That would require an approximate millage increase on property taxes of 26.195 mills (based on pre-reassessment millage). That would mean an addition $2,619 in taxes on a property with an assessed value of $100,000.

For a grades 7-12 building:

• $52 million (which does not include the cost of land): A 20-year bond at 4.5% interest would equal a yearly payment of approximately $3.9 million. That would require an approximate millage increase of 35.845 mills (based on pre-reassessment millage).

Renovation costs would also be high but less. However, these figures would depend on the property acquired by the district:

To renovate for grades 9-12:

• $21 million (not including property cost): A 20-year bond at 4.5% interest would equal a yearly payment of approximately $1.6 million, raising property tax millage by 14.476 mills (based on pre-reassessment millage).

To renovate for grades 7-12:

• $31 million (not including property cost): A 20-year bond at 4.5% interest would equal a yearly payment of approximately $2.3 million, raising property tax millage by 21.369 mills (based on pre-reassessment millage).

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