Mt. Pleasant Area's Rumbaugh Elementary School to close

Lloyd F. Rumbaugh Elementary School, which has educated Mt. Pleasant Area students for about 60 years, will shut its doors for good at the end of the school year.

Operational efficiency as well as academic opportunity were the driving factors in the decision to close Rumbaugh and reconfigure the elementary program, said Timothy Gabauer, superintendent of the Mt. Pleasant Area School District. School board members voted in June to close the school this year.

Rumbaugh serves about 160 kindergarten and first-grade students in the Ramsay Elementary School attendance area. The school was built to replace Fairview Elementary School, a two-room school destroyed by fire in 1958, according to the school district website.

The district reconfigured its elementary program for the 2019-20 school year, with kindergarten through third-grade classes placed in Donegal Elementary and Norvelt Elementary schools. Students in grades 4 to 6 will go to Ramsay in Mt. Pleasant Borough.

There were student, family and school activities in preparation for the realignment, Gabauer said. Assistant Superintendent Anthony DeMaro has been instrumental in organizing monthly meetings with staff, parents and administration to shape the activities as the district prepares for next school year, Gabauer said.

School officials had discussed closing the school before Gabauer came to Mt. Pleasant Area in November 2013.

The possibility of closing Rumbaugh, as well as where to move its students, was discussed at a public hearing in October 2017. Gabauer said at that time that the school district could generate revenue by selling or leasing the building on School Road.