Bedford County students fight for school renovation project

BEDFORD COUNTY, Pa. (WTAJ) — According to Bedford County students they deserve to have an opinion about the conditions they learn in.

Over 100 students and parents attended a recent school board meeting hosted by the Bedford Area School District to voice their concerns about the state of the high school.

The school board has been discussing a renovation project since 2020.

According to Dominic Albus, a student at the high school and a Student Board member, some new board members who recently joined are considering the choice to stop the renovation project.

“It was a plan that was already supposed to happen, but after COVID we’re recovering and trying to get this plan to go again. Now we have some of these board members that aren’t in approval, it’s kind of being stopped,” Albus, a Junior at Bedford High School said.

“We all consider this building a home in a way, and I think a lot of students reiterated that,” Sophia Pyle, a Senior and Student Board rep at the school said. “We consider the teachers to be parental figures. We have a lot of support in this school, but this building doesn’t give us the support that we need to do the great things that Bedford students are capable of.”

Parents who attended the meeting also agreed that the renovations were needed.

“One that really stood out to me was a student who just visited the Bedford County Jail for a school trip. Her statement was ‘The jail was safer and cleaner than the high school.’ That is what blew me away. It really hit home for me,” Brittanie Long, a parent and graduate of the school said.

The renovation project would cost $44,000,000 if it’s funded by local taxes only. This would cost the average taxpayer roughly four dollars a month, or approximately $51 a year.

Students and parents are speculating that the reason board members want to halt the project is because of the money it would cost taxpayers.

“With about 1500 students in the district that’s three cents a student per household. I don’t know about you, but to me, the safety, the health and the education of our students in our district is worth more, far more than three cents a student,” Long said.

The project would be the first big renovation for the school in the last 30 years.

Long said that the last renovation was during her senior year in the 1995-96 school year.

It’s uncertain if the discussion was tabled for a later time, and a final decision hasn’t been made.

The next school board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, March 19.