Abington voters will decide on a $285 million middle school in a rare referendum

Voters in the Abington School District will decide Tuesday whether to approve $285 million to build a middle school in a referendum that could reshape the district, and tax bills, for decades to come.

The ballot question — which would eventually cost the typical taxpayer $54 a month, according to district officials — is facing opposition from residents who say the project is too expensive and not backed up by specific plans from the district.

A separate group is campaigning in support of the ballot question, calling it crucial for investing in education and the district’s future.

If the question passes, it will be a rarity in Pennsylvania. Of 20 referendums statewide over the last two decades, just two have succeeded, according to the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials.

Here’s what to know about the referendum, and why it faces controversy as primary day nears:

Built in 1964, Abington Middle School is aging. The district says its needs are extensive: from lacking accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act to deteriorating roofs and floors and too-small gyms and performing arts spaces.

A district-wide facilities assessment in 2021 identified the middle school as the building with the greatest needs.

After enlisting consultants to evaluate the building in 2023, the district settled on four options — ranging from renovating the existing school, at a cost of $206 million, to creating separate schools for grades five to six and seven to eight, at a cost of up to $505 million — and surveyed community members. In January, the board opted to build one middle school that would hold 2,200 students and authorized the $285 million bond referendum.

Spending of this magnitude requires voter approval because Pennsylvania limits how much school districts can raise taxes by each year; the limit for next year is 4%, with exceptions for poorer districts.

Abington officials also say they want the community to have the opportunity to vote.

For the median single-family home, which has a market value of about $387,000, taxes will rise by $54 a month, according to the district — though the increase will not kick in immediately and will be phased in over several years, officials said. A tax calculator is available for residents to look up the specific impact on them.

The cost of the project and the process have proven controversial. At a projected $844 per square foot, critics say, the new Abington middle school would be more expensive than other recent area school construction projects. An elementary school currently being built in Radnor, for instance, was approved with a maximum project cost of $658 per square foot. In the Pennsbury School District, a new high school is proposed with a projected cost of $537 per square foot.

District officials did not respond specifically to those comparisons but said they had used bid data from local public school projects to arrive at construction costs. The Abington project also includes costs for demolishing the old school, as well as the costs of moving athletics fields, roadways, and parking; professional fees; and “projected escalation over four years of the project and a contingency reserve,” a spokesperson said.

Joe Rooney, a Republican running for the school board who has been leading an opposition campaign against the project, said the district is asking taxpayers to approve $285 million in borrowing without any concrete engineering or financing plans. (The district said a full design would be a “significant investment,” and those costs are part of the referendum amount.)

“We’re basically giving them carte blanche,” said Rooney, whose Common Sense Abington group has been mailing cards and posting on social media, urging residents to vote no.

Rooney questioned the role of ICS, the Media-based consulting firm hired by Abington to assess the middle school in 2023. Under a contract between ICS and the district signed in October 2023, the district agreed to pay ICS to produce a communications plan about the project, and to help the district create a referendum campaign slogan, website, public presentation, and mailer.

The contract also specified that Abington would use ICS’s services if the referendum passed, with fees to be negotiated. Typical design, program management, and construction management fees total about 10% to 12% of a project’s budget, according to the contract. Rooney calculated that at about $30 million.

The district said that ICS was selected through a competitive bidding process, and that costs would be reviewed monthly by the school board.

Mark Weiss resigned from the Abington-Rockledge Democratic Committee after objecting to the committee’s endorsement of the ballot question.

“It’s politically tone deaf to be trying to raise taxes right at this moment, when everybody’s talking about tariffs and recession,” said Weiss, who examined other recent school building projects and concluded that Abington’s costs were projected to be much higher.

Countering the project’s opponents is the Vote Yes to Invest campaign, which has also been sending mailers and planting lawn signs that frame the referendum as good for students and long-term property values.

“The current middle school is so far past its useful life” and has been “dragged along heaving and wheezing,” said John Spiegelman, an Abington Township commissioner chairing the Vote Yes campaign, whose wife, a teacher at Abington Senior High School, previously taught at the middle school for 25 years.

Spiegelman said the vote had become unfortunately politicized. Building schools “used to be something communities rallied around,” he said. Opponents have spread “misinformation” about the project, he said, including that the district had let the middle school fall into disrepair. His group is not funded by the district or the school board, he added.

It would cost almost as much to renovate the middle school — $206 million, according to the district — as it would to build, Spiegelman said. And renovation would not allow the district to make the building ADA-accessible or to widen hallways, he said.

By building a school, he added, students will not be displaced during the construction process as they would be during renovations.

Spiegelman said the district has been “as transparent as possible,” drawing a contrast with past controversy around plans for the district to accept money from billionaire Stephen Schwarzman to renovate its high school in exchange for naming rights.

The district says the middle school requires urgent repairs that would cost more than $100 million and would take four to five years to complete. That would require the district to borrow money, it says, with an annual price tag of $8.3 million for 20 years.

“This would require the district to make difficult budget decisions affecting all schools, including cuts to classroom education, staff, programs, student services, athletics and activities,” according to its website.

Rooney said the district could come back to residents with options of which repairs and renovations it could accomplish at different price points.

While the district says it has undergone a “multiyear planning process,” Rooney said, “there’s nothing wrong with taking a year and developing a reasonable plan.”