Bellefonte picks familiar name for new elementary school. When will it open?
The Bellefonte Area School District has approved a familiar name for its newest school.
The district’s school board voted to name its under-construction elementary school Bellefonte Elementary School, keeping the same name as Bellefonte’s oldest school. The original Bellefonte Elementary, built in 1942, is scheduled to close along with Benner Elementary School at the end of the 2025-26 school year to make way for the new school.
Bellefonte’s district began soliciting name suggestions for its new school in March and opened the process up to the public at large, including community members, school staff and parents. A committee for naming the school, staffed with some board members, administrators and one teacher, met on April 1 to evaluate the 125 received suggestions and narrow the options down to two finalists.
The committee came to “a strong consensus” that naming the new school after a specific person would be “somewhat problematic,” according to a memo summarizing the selection process. Suggestions were eventually narrowed to two categories: historical references and location.
Bellefonte Elementary comprised nearly 20% of all received suggestions — a proportion that grows even larger when factoring in variations of the name, including “Bellefonte Area Elementary School.” The leading candidate for a name representing historical significance, “Governors Elementary School,” claimed nearly 10% of the submissions thanks to its proximity to Governors Park and the area’s storied history as the home of seven governors, five of whom were governors of Pennsylvania.
The committee gave strong consideration to both “Bellefonte Elementary School” and “Bellefonte Area Elementary School” but chose the former to stay consistent with the district’s other elementary schools, which do not include “area” in their names. According to the rationale included with submissions, adding “area” to the name would help the new school look unified alongside Bellefonte’s middle and high schools, which both include “area” in their names.
Other leading submissions for the new school’s name included Gregory Butterworth Elementary (five suggestions), Big Spring Elementary (five suggestions) and Andrew Gregg Curtin Elementary (four suggestions), the latter of which recognizes the Bellefonte native who served as Pennsylvania’s 15th governor. Several suggestions attempted to honor the soon-to-be-closed schools with portmanteaus, including “Bellner” or “BelleBen.” Other whimsical suggestions included “Cheeseburger Elementary” (listed without rationale from its anonymous proponent) and “Field of Dreams Elementary,” presumably honoring the famed 1989 baseball film.
All five board members in attendance at Wednesday’s board meeting at the Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology voted in support for Bellefonte Elementary as the school’s name. Jon Guizar, the board president, initially showed support for Governors Elementary but changed his vote in favor of Bellefonte Elementary, noting approval of a new name would require a majority of the board’s nine seats and any disagreement among the five present board members would require another vote.
Bellefonte’s new elementary school will span 98,000 feet and accommodate around 750 students between kindergarten and the fifth grade. Key features include outdoor learning spaces, a STEM lab and a media center. Proposed site plans for the project showed leftover room for athletic fields on the 107.6-acre property behind Bellefonte Area High School.
Though the $55.3 million school remains largely on track to open in time for the 2026-27 school year, the project’s completion dates are lagging about seven weeks behind schedule, according to the most recent construction update presented to the board March 18. Roshelle Fennell of SiteLogIQ, the district’s construction management firm, said some temperature-sensitive activity involving roofing or brickwork was delayed by the overly harsh winter.
“It is due to the winter that we had,” Fennell told the school board on March 18. “We never know if the winter is going to be mild or crazy. It was very cold to do some of the activities we had scheduled during that time frame, but we’re confident that time will be picked up in the next two to three months.”
The most recent project timeline presented before the board shows a substantial completion date in late January and a final completion date in late March. Those timelines, which are expected to move up as construction picks up, would keep the school on track for its target opening in 2026.
Bellefonte’s board approved the closures of Bellefonte and Benner elementary schools in late January with a 6-3 vote. The long-awaited decision followed a lengthy series of required meetings, studies and hearings that ultimately concluded it would be best to shutter the schools, which would require extensive renovations to comply with accessibility and safety standards.
After voting to close the two schools, the school board approved in February early steps to examine renovations for Pleasant Gap Elementary School. The project, which still requires board approval for its design and construction, would upgrade heating, ventilation and air condition systems and other school infrastructure.
This story was originally published April 10, 2025 at 12:12 PM.
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