After serving on the Quaker Valley School Board from 2007 until 2019, it’s disheartening to read the astonishing level of misinformation about the new high school.
When I joined the board, it was our preference to renovate or build a new facility on the site of the present high school. After years of meetings devoted to that aim, reality set in. Our present site does not work. Its footprint is extraordinarily small for a modern high school. Access is a nightmare. Much of the site lies within a flood zone, and the present facility is built on fill from our distant past. Finally, during a multi-year construction process, our students would be forced to relocate to a remote building or to trailers. When the board renovated the elementary schools and middle school, nothing alarmed our parents more than having their children bused to an alternative location off site for just one year during those renovations.
Faced with this reality, the board engaged a respected commercial real estate broker in a lengthy process to scan dozens of properties throughout the district before the proposed site was chosen. Despite the din, past duly elected boards and the present board asked the difficult questions to arrive at today’s solution. They did their homework.
Yet, there is a well-funded and coordinated effort, principally led and funded by families whose children did not even attend QV, to delay the high school project through scare tactics, misinformation and now the legal process. They either don’t trust the process or the representatives that our community elected.
As a community, we have kicked this can down the road long enough, so much so that we are now at a competitive disadvantage with our neighbors who have modern high schools for their children.
It’s time to build for our children!
Dave Pusateri
Sewickley
