School farewells, Penn State salaries and more: Top Centre County stories

Centre County saw a mix of community milestones and major institutional news this week, from a beloved school’s final farewell to a new report about Penn State’s top earners. Below is a roundup of Tuesday’s biggest stories.

• Hundreds of Bellefonte community members gathered Monday evening to say goodbye to Benner Elementary School, which closed Tuesday after decades of serving the Bellefonte Area School District. The school opened in 1962 as part of a nationwide push to consolidate small one- or two-room schoolhouses. A new, larger Bellefonte Elementary School is on track to open for the 2026-27 school year along Airport Road. The 96,000-square-foot building was constructed for $55.3 million and can accommodate up to 750 students.
• Former head football coach James Franklin topped Penn State’s highest-paid employees for fiscal year 2024-2025 with a compensation package of $8.57 million. Athletics accounted for five of the top seven compensation packages, though only two of those employees remain after coaching shakeups. Franklin’s pay package was about five times larger than President Neeli Bendapudi’s $1.6 million, which placed her seventh on the list. Men’s basketball coach Mike Rhoades was third at $3.5 million.
• Climb Nittany, Centre County’s only rock climbing gym, closed Sunday, but supporters have secured $1.9 million in funding commitments to potentially purchase the property and business. The community raised the money in just three weeks to match an offer from another buyer. Fundraising leader Eric Chase said the gym is expected to remain closed through June, with plans for an anonymous single investor to own the property while a group of community members operates the business. The Climb Nittany branding will remain.
• State Reps. Paul Takac, D-College Township, and Kerry Benninghoff, R-Bellefonte, introduced a bill Friday to sell about nine acres of state prison land to Ferris Land Development for $90,000. The landlocked parcel sits along the growing Shiloh Road corridor in Benner Township. Benner Township supervisors unanimously supported the sale, noting the property is not conducive to stand-alone development and represents about one-tenth of 1% of state-owned property in the area. The parcel is separate from the shuttered Rockview state prison site.

The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The source reporting referenced above was written and edited entirely by journalists.