After school closure in Penns Valley, residents hope new use will heal ‘broken community’
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- Penns Valley’s school board agreed to donate a former school to Miles Township.
- Miles Township will use the property to develop a mixed-use community center.
- The township says it will not need to raise taxes to afford acquiring the property.
Plans for a community center that some residents of a rural Centre County township say is badly needed are moving forward following the acquisition of a key Penns Valley property.
The Penns Valley Area School District has agreed to effectively donate the former Miles Township Elementary School to its namesake township. Conveying the building and its 6.58-acre Rebersburg property will allow municipal officials to move forward with plans to convert it into a mixed-use community center that aims to meet a wide range of resident needs.
Penns Valley’s school board approved the donation at its board meeting Tuesday, where community members packed the Penns Valley Elementary and Intermediate School library to support Miles Township’s efforts to acquire the school property. Not a single speaker across the evening’s 36-minute public comment period advocated for any other outcome.
During the meeting, the school board voted 6-3 to scuttle a motion that would have enabled the district to move forward with disposing of the property using sealed bids — a process that could have more fairly ensured proper notice to interested parties, it said. The board then unanimously voted to convey the Miles Township Elementary property to its namesake township and reject other proposals for acquisition.
The district received five total proposals, including two that would have installed local businesses — including a grocery market or a restaurant — inside the former school building.
Lorie Claar, a Rebersburg resident who lives adjacent to the former school, urged the district to go with Miles Township’s proposal after the school board voted to close the elementary school last summer.
“We’re a broken community,” Claar said. “We’ve had so much loss, and there’s all this talk about watching the number of students coming into our district. If we don’t have something for these young parents to want to bring their families to our township, there’s not going to be anything there for them.”
Miles Township’s supervisors hope its vision for a community center at the former school property will help rejuvenate the community.
Plans include retail spaces, offices and more
The municipality’s proposal for the project, available publicly on the district’s website, outlined plans to use the building to house municipal offices, retail spaces for local businesses and office spaces available for rent. The building could also be used to host community meetings and events, offer a renovated gymnasium for public recreation and house a child care center or senior center.
Developing a community center in Miles Township would significantly reduce residents’ need to travel across Centre County to access other facilities and family-friendly infrastructure, including sporting events, music lessons and other activities. Other community members said they hope it would help property values bounce back following the school’s closure.
Proponents of transforming the former school into a community center have emphasized the limited public land left in Miles Township. Its supervisors, who spoke at a township meeting last week, emphasized the property stands as the last remaining public space Miles Township could use to expand its facilities without using eminent domain.
Township supervisor Jason Bartlebaugh implored Penn Valley’s school board to make the “civic, community-minded decision” by conveying the property to Miles Township.
“State College is coming this way, and we’re going to need that space,” Bartlebaugh said. “Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week or next year, but five, 10 years down the road, the township is going to need that to expand and serve the residents in this community as it grows. For well over three quarters of a century, that building has been a cornerstone of education and recreation for the citizens of Miles Township.”
Miles Township residents ask for fairness
At the school board meeting, several community members noted Penns Valley previously returned former schools in Millheim and Spring Mills to their communities.
Barbara Abbott, a Madisonburg resident, said that same opportunity should be afforded to Miles Township, whose residents are sometimes treated like “the poor cousins” within Penns Valley’s district.
“I’m here tonight to ask for fairness,” Abbott said. “We would just like to receive the same opportunity for our school as Millheim received and as Spring Mills received. Our community needs that property, not only for the families that utilize it but also our township.”
The process through which Penns Valley’s district sought to dispose of the Miles Township Elementary property complicated efforts to simply convey the building and its land to the township.
Penns Valley moved in September to solicit proposals for the building, its land or both, allowing interested parties to share their visions for the property and how much they might offer for it through a potential sale. Notably, proposals were not collected nearly 20 years ago when the district conveyed its former Gregg Township Elementary School to allow the namesake township to develop what is now the Old Gregg School Community & Recreation Center.
Proposals received by the district included two separate offers of at least $325,000 for the building and its land, which would be used to house private businesses, restaurants and other vendors. Small-scale proposals for the property called for installing a new baseball field or housing a nonprofit organization.
Under Pennsylvania’s school code, districts can use public auctions, sealed bids and private sales to dispose of school property. Another option allows them to sell property to the presiding municipality for an appropriate consideration — usually a symbolic dollar — as long as the buildings and land are used for public purposes, district solicitor Scott Etter previously told Penns Valley’s school board.
In that last scenario, ownership of the property can later revert to the presiding school district if the property is no longer used for municipal purposes or the municipality can no longer afford to operate there.
Affordability is not a significant concern for Miles Township’s supervisors, who reiterated Tuesday that acquiring the property would not directly require a tax increase. Supervisor Eric Miller said a tax hike already proposed for the township would instead offset rising costs for emergency medical services in the area.
Bartlebaugh, another supervisor, said the township can comfortably afford to acquire the property by enacting a fee in lieu of parkland, a process which would provide enough funds if applied to subdivisions over just the last seven years. If Miles Township raised no funds and used solely taxpayer dollars to fund the property’s acquisition, it would cost the same as roughly a two-mill tax increase, or about $30 annually per taxpayer.
Miles Township Elementary’s operations, including utilities, repairs and general maintenance, were thought to cost between about $70,000 and $80,000 each year, though that figure has likely dropped a bit since the school closed.
The 17,810-square-foot Miles Township Elementary remains in “good overall condition” at 80 Town Lane in Rebersburg, district officials said in the fall. The building, which dates back to 1927 but received signification renovations and additions in 1961, features nine standard classrooms, several office spaces and restrooms as well as a large kitchen area, a gymnasium and a roof repaired in 2022.
While expressing support for conveying the property to the township, Domer Smeltzer, the school board president, said the board must trust Miles Township’s supervisors are acting in the best interests of their constituents and financial responsibility.
“As a board member, I’m an elected official. But I don’t think it’s in my right to judge whether they’re capable of [operating the property] or not,” Smeltzer said. “If they’re coming to us and they’re saying they are, I am going to trust that that’s what their intentions are.”
What comes next?
Penns Valley’s unanimous motion to approve the donation of the former Miles Township school now authorizes the district to prepare legal documents, including a binding agreement and deed, to complete that process. From there, Miles Township can begin planning to use it for municipal purposes.
It’s not yet clear when Miles Township intends to begin using the former school building. Township officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
This story was originally published January 21, 2026 at 1:49 PM.
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