Now open, Centre County’s newest school is ‘a welcome change.’ Take a look inside
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- The new Liberty-Curtin Elementary School is now open in Blanchard.
- The $20.5 million building features collaborative spaces, technological upgrades and more.
- The new building features several displays honoring the legacy of the former school.
Although students at Liberty-Curtin Elementary School have had a few weeks to get familiar with their new building, community members were invited this week to tour Centre County’s newest school.
District administrators, local officials, faculty and staff, students, families and even alumni were all on hand Monday evening for a ribbon-cutting ceremony that recognized years of work toward opening the Keystone Central School District’s newest school in Blanchard. It’s also the only school in Centre County for the district, which also serves parts of Clinton and Potter counties.
Following a few speeches, hundreds of community members were free to tour the state-of-the-art building and peruse decades-old yearbooks and time capsules celebrating Liberty-Curtin’s longtime legacy.
Brett Umbenhouer, Liberty-Curtin’s principal, credited an endless outpouring of community support for helping the district plan and construct a new elementary school that hopes to better serve students for decades to come.
“Tonight isn’t just about cutting a ribbon. It’s about recognizing the years of planning, hard work and dedication that brought us all to this moment,” Umbenhouer said. “This school reflects who we are: a community that comes together, a place where every child matters and a future that feels wide open. And tonight, as we celebrate, let’s remember: This is our school. It’s built by our community for our children and for generations still to come, and that’s something to be proud of.”
The new 49,500-square-foot building features dedicated art and music rooms, a media center and an expanded dual-purpose gymnasium and cafeteria. The building, constructed for roughly $20.5 million, also boasts loftier ceilings and larger hallways while meeting accessibility standards.
Umbenhouer said he’s already noticed significant improvements in staff and faculty morale since the school year began in late August. Liberty-Curtin’s employees — affectionately called “staffulty” — played a key role in developing plans for the new school that would enhance the experiences of its approximately 160 students in kindergarten through the fourth grade.
“Coming through the door each day, our kids are skipping and smiling. They can’t wait to get into the building,” Umbenhouer told the Centre Daily Times. “The level of collaboration and working together kind of carried over from this building project. Teachers and staff and the community kind of modeled that, and you see it in hallways and in classrooms. Students are doing the same thing.”
Lana Weaver, a fourth grade teacher, spent 22 years instructing students at Liberty-Curtin Elementary before beginning her 23rd year in the new building. She said her students are more engaged and collaborative with their peers thanks to some amenities in the more modern building, including greater access to natural light and windows throughout the school.
“I think it is a major change for the community and a major change for the students and faculty, but it’s a welcome change,” Weaver said. “Our students are enthralled with it. They love it, and they’re engaged. The school is brighter, more open and more collaborative.”
Weaver credited new areas in the school for greater engagement among her students. Liberty-Curtin’s new main entrance, for example, features a dedicated collaborative space suitable for bringing lessons out of classrooms, lining students up for bus dismissal or hosting in-school events and book fairs.
Weaver said many of the new school’s amenities have helped bring the student experience up to modern standards.
“I don’t want to call them upgrades, because they’re not really upgrades,” she said. “This is what education is about now — moveable furniture, open spaces, collaboration, technology. The ability to use technology a little more easily than before… it’s state-of-the-art.”
Past, present and future
As Liberty-Curtin faculty and staff worked to modernize their school, they also made strong efforts to preserve its history.
Their commitment to honoring the past was on full display earlier this year when Liberty-Curtin officials cracked open a time capsule first sealed away at the former school’s dedication ceremony in 1967. Items found inside the decades-old capsule included sealed bids for the project to construct the original building, class photos, old building keys and even a program for the 1967 junior high prom.
The cornerstone that held the time capsule is now on display inside the new Liberty-Curtin Elementary alongside countless other artifacts dating back to the school’s opening in 1966. Additionally, Keystone Central Career and Technical Center students cleaned and refurbished Liberty-Curtin’s original main entrance sign — complete with the tennis ball stuck inside it for decades — so it could be displayed inside the new building’s main hallway.
Weaver, one of the school’s two fourth-grade teachers, said leaving the former Liberty-Curtin Elementary behind was difficult but meaningful. That shift was apparent during construction, which put the old school just a wingspan’s reach away from the new building.
Weaver said the school’s commitment to honoring its past is driven by the community’s steadfast support of Blanchard’s elementary school. She believes the new school — and the efforts to preserve its predecessor — gracefully balance the past while preparing for the future.
“I was ready for a new school, but 22 years in one place made it a little hard to say goodbye. Even though you’re moving on to bigger and better things, it was difficult but needed,” Weaver said. “Families know how important it is to have this community school. Retired teachers and alumni come back. They know that they’re welcome here, and that says a lot about this place and this community and the teachers who work here.”
Efforts to construct a new Liberty-Curtin Elementary began as far back as 2018. The project, which broke ground in early 2024, sought to bring Blanchard’s elementary school up to modern standards and improve infrastructure issues, including a deteriorating roof, as the existing building barreled toward its estimated end of life in 2025. Building on the same site allowed students to continue studying in the existing building without needing to bus them to another school in the vast district.
Jeffrey Straub, the lead architect for the project from Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates, said the school’s opening reflects a years-long process with strong community input.
“There were really a lot of things lacking in the previous facility that the community had lived with for quite some time,” Straub said. “It’s time for us to go away and for the school and the community to really enjoy this building for the coming years.”
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