Two towns, two schools—same story?
Posted March 24, 2008 | Published by The Pocono Record, Pennsylvania
The district's school board is deciding whether it should continue with plans to renovate Stroudsburg High School’s existing building on West Main Street or build a new one on Chipperfield Drive instead. The dispute attracted the attention of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which mentioned the city as the site of one of many ongoing conflicts over the fates of neighborhood schools in a report titled "Why Johnny Can't Walk to School: Historic Neighborhood Schools in the Age of Sprawl."
Read the full article from the The Pocono Record
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Submitted by Preserve Stroudsburg at: June 10, 2008
This was an extremely tough issue for those supporting Stroudsburg's preservation efforts: the small community serves a large regional school district, and massive growth outside the borough has put tremendous pressure on the school. The decision was eventuallly made to renovate and expand the existing 1920s high school, which had long since been historically compromised. To accommodate expansion, however, over 20 adjacent homes of varying ages and styles will be demolished. One tradition will be maintained, but another will still be lost. Worse, the loss of taxable property increases pressure to redevelop other areas of town, and talk of large-scale urban renewal projects looms in historic neighborhoods.