LANSDALE-The North Penn School Board Facilities and Operations Committee met for their monthly meeting Monday night, to give updates on the ongoing Knapp renovations and the hot-button Crawford Stadium construction issue.

As always, the meeting began with an audience of citizens, and North Penn graduate Ben Hartranft, aka “Mr. North Penn”, was first. He proposed that a sensory room for special needs students should be included in the new design of Crawford Stadium. He argued that the addition would most likely bring out students who otherwise would never go to football games, and cited his involvement with the Eagles Autism Challenge and how they have “taken the awareness to action”.

Board Member Jonathan Kassa expressed the importance of accommodating students with special needs, saying “Crawford needs to be inclusive for all of our community members.”

Facilities and Operations Director Scott Kennedy then gave a brief update on the ongoing Knapp Elementary renovations. The project is going incredibly smoothly and is in fact ahead of schedule.

Board President Tina Stoll and Members Juliane Ramic and Kassa expressed the fantastic feedback they received from parents at Knapp’s Welcome Back event.

The Committee then discussed North Penn’s current hottest topic, the Crawford Stadium renovations. The main issue the Board is facing is whether to accept current bids and approve construction that would begin in October, or to reopen the bidding and potentially push back the renovations until after the Class of 2020’s Graduation.

Cons of starting construction in just a few weeks would be risking the ability to have Graduation in Crawford Stadium in June. The timeline would have the project completed in time, but a harsh winter or even excessively rainy spring could prevent that from happening.

Cons of reopening the bidding are that the new bids could end up even higher than the current ones. Although Chief Financial Officer Steve Skrocki said that “a rebid would not result in a 1-2 million dollar savings. At most I would say $100-200,000.” He did acknowledge the possibility that the district could end up paying even more. Currently, the lowest prime contract cost of renovating Crawford Stadium stands at roughly $9 million total with the base bid at $8.4 million, and Skrocki predicts a +/- 5% change if bidding was reopened.

 “The latest estimate we had on the base bid was $6.7 million, and the lowest base bid we received was $8.4 million, so about $1.7 million over what the last estimate was,” expressed Skrocki.

Many of the Committee members were in agreement that the Stadium project is cleary on an aggressive timeline, with Skrocki saying “The construction market is hot right now, interest rates are low, but this is a very aggressive timeline.”

Superintendent Dr. Curt Dietrich added, “It is a very tight timeline-no doubt about it. And that’s a challenge.”

At the conclusion of the meeting, the Committee motioned to have further discussion about Crawford Stadium at the Board’s Worksession next Tuesday.

If members of the community wish to attend, the meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 1, at 7:30 p.m. at the ESC.