Planning for the Future: Progress Update on the Facility Master Plan Process
In response to growing enrollment and the aging infrastructure of its schools, the Great Valley School District is working with the architectural firm SCHRADERGROUP of Manayunk to facilitate the building assessments and master planning process. The firm has been working to gather and interpret all relevant information. A series of community input meetings were scheduled throughout the 2019-2020 school year to review findings and to begin developing district-wide concepts and a strategy to address the goals and objectives for the District’s future facility needs.

Data Collection
The Master Planning process included a detailed survey of each of the District’s school buildings and support facilities to determine the costs for recommended improvements for budgeting and capital planning purposes. The design team toured the district-owned facilities in the spring of 2019 and finalized the building assessments with associated costs for improvements over the summer of 2019.  The design team simultaneously met with the school principals to review the programs by grade level and how the buildings are currently being scheduled room by room. This information was compared to how the building was most likely intended to be used when the building was originally designed. This provides a true representation of the school’s “functional” capacity. The District also commissioned DecisionInsite to prepare a demographic study and projected enrollments based on housing developments and housing stock rollover within the district. Comparing the building capacities to the projected enrollments allowed the team to determine the district’s ability to accommodate the anticipated population for the next 5 to 10 years.

Next Steps
After a review of data and a series of School Board presentations and community workshop sessions, the community preference to explore a Grade 5/6 center emerged. In October 2020, SCHRADERGROUP presented the Great Valley Board of School Directors with two possible location options: land adjacent to the K.D. Markley Elementary site, and the district-owned property on Bacton Hill Road. After careful consideration, the Board authorized the architect to further explore the land adjacent to K.D. Markley Elementary School as a possible site for a Grade 5/6 center. 

PLEASE USE THE LINKS ON THE LEFT OF THIS PAGE TO ACCESS OTHER INFORMATION AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT RELATED TO THIS PROCESS.