We would like to introduce the Quaker Valley community to our citizen-led group, QV Strong. We are Quaker Valley residents, parents and grandparents who support robust community understanding, involvement and transparency into all school district planning and projects. We are excited about the progress of the New QV High School project, as we have been watching this process unfold for many years.
We are fortunate to live in a community that values the active participation and engagement of its residents. Our group formed, in part, to help share accurate information about the new high school with all Quaker Valley residents. We believe there should be room for discussion concerning this significant project, but find it is also necessary to address the inaccuracies and myths that are being circulated in our community. An opposition group is spreading misinformation and has even hired lawyers in an attempt to prevent the construction of a new school. Recent editorials are largely based on outdated information and, in some cases, outright falsehoods. We believe it’s important to outline the facts.
A new QV High School benefits the entire community. Completion of the new Quaker Valley High School will enhance the education of future generations of students for decades to come. It will boost property values as the district attracts potential homebuyers who currently opt to purchase in school districts with far more desirable high schools. A new high school also enhances our ability to recruit top teachers, allowing us to remain among the top-performing districts in the area. Many of our peer schools have modern, technology-rich facilities — making Quaker Valley less attractive to new top talent. The new school will boost the reputation of our community — one that offers an excellent public library, abundant parks, an arts center, youth sports leagues and recently modernized elementary and middle schools.
The new high school project is underway. The school district has engaged in a thoughtful, deliberate, fully transparent planning process. Land for a new high school has been purchased by the district. Traffic impact studies are nearly finished. Final geotechnical tests and surveys are nearing completion. The search process for an architectural firm to complete final construction documents is well underway.
“Renovation option” is behind us. Opponents of the new high school continue to mislead the public into believing renovation of the existing building remains a viable option. It is not. Engineers and other technical consultants conducted extensive due diligence on the feasibility of renovating and expanding the existing high school — projected to cost $70 million. A renovation would still have failed to solve several problems, including parking and traffic challenges, aging infrastructure and a limited footprint on the existing site. The flood plain encompassing most of the unused land at the current high school made expansion nearly impossible. Even if renovation had been a viable option, students would be forced to spend at least three of their high school years learning online, remotely, or in crowded, temporary classroom trailers on the high school football field while the existing school building was under construction. This is an unsatisfactory scenario.
Public input: The QV School District has spent hundreds of hours over many years gathering community input as part of the planning process for a new high school. The consulting firm BrainSpaces, in collaboration with the district, led an exhaustive process soliciting input from parents, students, teachers and others in the community. The district also conducted a community-wide survey to gather public input on the project. We encourage all residents to visit the Blueprint QV section of the Quaker Valley School District website (qvsd.org) to review 25 published reports, due diligence studies and video presentations that address major decision points. The opposition group asserts the district is moving forward “without ever asking the community if this is what they want.” This is simply false.
Referendum: The opposition asserts a referendum should be held before moving forward on the construction of a new high school. However, Pennsylvania law is very clear: school districts only hold referendums when they seek to exceed a certain debt threshold and raise taxes above the Act 1 Index. Due to the conservative financing plan for the new school project, a referendum is very unlikely to be triggered. Referendums cannot be used to approve or disapprove a district’s planning or construction projects. Instead, residents have made their strong support for a new high school known through countless public planning workshops, community forums, school board meetings and the election of our current school board members.
Construction impacts: Opponents of the new high school have attempted to sow fear among surrounding homeowners by raising issues that will continue to be carefully considered during the engineering and design process. As residents of this community, we are committed to ensuring traffic, environmental, water drainage, geological and technical concerns are addressed throughout the process. The high school is being designed to work with the topography and minimize the impact on the environment. Due diligence was done to determine the feasibility of construction prior to purchasing the land. The project will involve extensive community collaboration with regular feedback and communication from the school district.
School taxes: Quaker Valley School District’s tax (millage) rate ranks among the lowest of all Allegheny County school districts. In fact, among all of the county’s school districts, QV school tax rates rank number 35 out of 45. Mt. Lebanon, Fox Chapel, South Fayette, Bethel Park, Moon and 34 other Allegheny County school districts pay higher school tax (millage) rates than QV School District homeowners. Some opponents of the high school have spread misleading and inaccurate data about our school tax burden. In the end, our property values are less impacted by the tax rates than the quality of our schools.
You can learn the facts and stay current by visiting QVStrong.org, our QVStrong Facebook page, or the QVSD.org website. We invite all residents of Quaker Valley to join us in working together with the school district to make the New QV High School a cornerstone of our community and a center of learning we can be proud of.
Don Birnie, Doug Donaldson, Kirk Fordham, Hadley Haas, Jami Holles, Toby Holles, Daphne Homer, Tim Merrill, Joan Murdoch, Dave Pusateri, Beth Pyle, Wendy Quattlebaum, Beth Rom, John Stunda, Jerry Veshio, Richard Webb
