Quaker Valley School District officials have approved floor plans for a proposed high school in Leet Township.

The board voted 8-0 at a special meeting Wednesday night to move forward with designs crafted by BSHM Architects and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Architects. Board member Daniela Helkowski was absent.

Floor plan approval was required for the electrical and mechanical engineers to begin their review and designs.

The proposed $100 million school is on 150 acres of land off Camp Meeting Road. It straddles Leet Township, Edgeworth and Leetsdale.

Architects have been working on project development for about a year. There were meetings with teachers, staff, students and other district residents in which input was gathered and analyzed as part of the design process.

BSHM principal John Orsini delivered a presentation prior to the vote.

“We’re pretty excited about this,” Orsini told the board. “We’re between schematic design and design development. … We take the building to the next level.”

Plans revealed

Floor plans indicate there will be three levels to the school.

The ground floor will have a gymnasium, cafeteria and an auditorium. The main floor will have administrative offices and classrooms, and the upper floor will have classrooms and guidance counselor rooms.

Orsini said they wanted to separate guidance from the principal’s office so students seeking such help would not feel like they were being sent to the office for possible discipline or embarrassment.

The gymnasium is estimated to be 12,000 square feet — larger than the 7,000-square-foot gym at the current high school at 625 Beaver St.

The auditorium is projected to seat about 800 people, an upgrade from the current 500-seat theater. Estimated cafeteria size was not available.

Plans indicate there will be three elevators, including a freight elevator by the music department to help transport instruments and equipment. The other two elevators will be near the center of the building closer to the classrooms.

Classrooms are to the north of the facility and will have a view of the hills and greenspace. The cafeteria, gym and theater are toward the south, and the cafeteria with a view of the Ohio River. The number of classrooms was not available.

The current school has classes of about 18 to 19 students. The new classrooms would be able to accommodate 24 to 25 students. Current enrollment is about 600 students.

Orsini said they wanted to create some space in the new school should there be a spike in enrollment. The facility will also be Americans with Disabilities Act compliant.

“Every student needs to get to every space, that’s critical,” Orsini said.

There will be two entrances to the school and two drop-off areas, one area for buses and another for parents and student drivers.

District approval

Several board members, including Giani Floro, commended Orsini and his team for their efforts.

Floro said one of the goals is to not only provide students an improved place to learn, but a facility residents can use when school is not in session.

“We tried to put a lot of thought equity into how is the community’s going to use this building at off-classroom hours,” Floro said. “This evening, they have the youth basketball going on in the Edgeworth Elementary gymnasium. How can we best build this building so that can happen in off-hours without going into academic spaces. … When you’re looking at the grainy details, it’s an incredible work of good effort and a culmination of a lot of time.”

Floro said some of the school plans would not be released to the public due to safety and health concerns.

“This is the time in the process that we start to engage other disciplines, other jurisdictions around and starting to talk about that,” Orsini said. “Also, what kind of hardware are we talking about. We look at where cameras are located and that kind of stuff. This is that development stage when that all occurs.”

Timing of approval

The board vote comes a mere 24 hours before the Leet Township’s zoning hearing board plans to debate appealing an Allegheny County Common Pleas judge’s decision to allow the project to move forward.

Senior Judge Joseph James issued his six-page opinion on Nov. 28 overturning the zoning hearing board’s February decision to deny a special exception for the 167,000-square foot project.

Leet’s zoning hearing board will meet Thursday night to possibly seek having the issue go before a state court.

Charlie Gauthier, district director of facilities and administrative services, said after the school board meeting that he was not concerned about the township’s discussion; he was focused on working with the architects.

“The court has given us approval, so we’re moving forward,” he said.

Gauthier stressed there is more work to be done before plans would be submitted to Leet’s planning commission. Another public update may occur sometime in January.

“We’ll still adjust the plans as needed as we continue to meet with staff, the administration and local municipalities,” he said. “There will still be some changes.”

District officials had hoped to have the new school built and ready for students by the 2025-26 school year.

Those dreams have since been altered, largely due to the delay in zoning approval, to have construction begin in 2024 with doors being opened in the fall of 2027.

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