The Bensalem Township School District was gearing up to spend upward of $100 million to renovate its existing middle schools or build entirely new facilities to support an expanding student population.
A $12 million budget deficit ruined that plan.
“We realized we can’t pay for the schools we have, so we’re not going to talk about schools we don’t have,” board member Rachel Fingles said.
In October 2024, Bensalem launched its “Middle School Project,” which aimed to bring sixth grade up from elementary school into middle school and address aging infrastructure.
By June 2025, the school board had narrowed down the fate of its middle schools to three options:
- Renovate and add to both Robert K. Shafer and Cecelia Snyder Middle schools for $115 to $125 million.
- Construct a single new building on the Shafer campus to replace both existing middle schools for between $145 and $155 million.
- Replace the existing middle schools with three new buildings that share larger spaces — such as a cafeteria, gym and auditorium — on the Shafer property for between $155 and $165 million.
All three options would have increased real estate taxes for property owners within the district.
The board voted unanimously in November 2024 to move the district’s sixth graders to the middle school to alleviate capacity issues in the district’s elementary and middle schools. It was expected to approve one of the three middle school options by the start of the 2025-26 school year.
But at the end of 2025, knowledge of the budget deficit tabled discussion on the project. The school board is not planning on revisiting the plan anytime soon, officials said.
“It’s not that we don’t want to do this project,” Fingles said. “We do. There’s just no way to do it right now because we need to focus on not losing what we have, and the idea of adding more is impossible.”
While the school board works to bring the district out of its current “dire” financial position, as Fingles described it, sixth grade remains in the district’s six elementary schools, which are collectively operating above the recommended 90% capacity.
“The only people struggling here are the children,” school board director Deborah King said at an October 2025 board meeting.
Renovations to Shafer and Snyder middle schools or the construction of a new school are unlikely to occur within the next five years, Fingles said. Once the school district comes out of its current deficit and can reconsider the Middle School Project, construction would still take years.
Bensalem district administrators declined to comment on the status of the project, stating only that “it is not moving forward.”
Fingles said she hopes the project will eventually resurface, as it would benefit students’ education.
“The students are continuing to get what they need,” she said. “But the long-term solution starts with money, and we don’t have it.”
Ben Shapiro is a news intern at the Bucks County Courier Times. Reach him at bshapiro@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Bensalem kills new middle school project amid budget crunch. What now?
