Penn-Trafford approves purchase of new administration building, security cameras

Penn-Trafford school administrators will get new offices in Bushy Run Corporate Park after the board agreed this week to spend $1.7 million on a new building there.

The current administration building is located on Harrison City-Export Road less than a mile away from the high school. The building — which is more than 100 years old — houses the district’s human resources, student report services, school psychologists, superintendent and assistant superintendent.

Superintendent Matthew Harris said the building needs about $1 million in repairs.

“Although it’s still safe right now for the workers to be in, we do have to be careful over the next couple years if we were to maintain the building,” Harris said, “especially with all the different repairs that we needed.”

Finding a replacement building was the most cost efficient option for the school, he said.

“We wanted to really build a new administration building, and the cost we got was $3.4 million for an 8,000 square-foot building on our own piece of land,” Harris said. “At that price, it’s just unacceptable. We can’t afford that much, and we didn’t want to give up our property to do so.”

The district landed on a 30,000 square-foot building on Randall Court in Penn Township, about 5 miles from the high school. The district plans to use the second floor of the building and lease the first floor since it does not need the entire space, Harris said.

The district will close on the property Oct. 13 and move into the building by mid-November at the latest. It will look to sell the current administration building after closing on the new property.

Other purchases

Board members also voted to purchase more than 400 security cameras and new door access systems for each school in the district. While 377 of the units will replace existing cameras, 46 of them will go toward filling “blind spots” in the current security system, Harris said, namely outside of the school buildings.

Installation should wrap between October and November, Harris said. Because the new cameras pair directly with the current security system, the district will not have to disable the whole system during installation.

The total cost of the security upgrades, including installation, is about $516,000, Assistant Superintendent Scott Inglese said.

“These cameras have a lot of capabilities that the old ones did not,” Inglese said. “We’re able to do some recognition of different things if we have somebody that we want to keep an eye on or maybe flag an individual that may be problematic.

“We can identify that person and the computer’s able to flag that individual and give alerts to the principals if there is a suspect that may be suspicious,” Inglese said.

Some cameras, Inglese said, are 10 to 15 years old. Because the cameras and door access systems pair together into one system, it is efficient to replace both at the same time, he said.

“Right now, the system’s really sketchy and cameras are down,” Inglese said. “It’s been problematic for a year or two, so we are glad to get a new system.”

The security system will continue to help the school address and mitigate “bad behavior,” Inglese said.

Installation of the cameras and door access system will start at the high school and continue to the two middle schools and five elementary schools.

All votes were unanimous. School board members Dallas Leonard and Nick Petrucci were not present.