Construction cones and vehicles can be seen surrounding a former courtyard between the current H-pod, at left, and A-pod of North Penn High School, on Feb. 17, 2026. (Photo courtesy of North Penn School District)
Snow covers campus as trees cleared for work area
A new year has brought a new look to parts of the North Penn High School campus and an update on the timeline for the next phases of work there.
“In the midst of all of this work, there are some other projects we’re working on: we’ve already demo’d the towers on the radio site, that made way for the staging area, and we have one new tower to construct, on the site, for the AM radio station,” said project construction manager Jamie Lynch.
“We’ve got a tower designer that has helped us, we’re putting a bid package together for a separate bid this spring,” he said.
Last May the district hosted a tile-breaking ceremony at the school’s Rick Carroll Natatorium, marking the start of the first phase of a multi-year renovation project slated to run into the early 2030s. Later that summer staff reported on the demolition of the radio towers on the former WNPV Radio site just north of the school, and last fall, the board awarded a $9.4 million contract for a new transportation center just north of the current one, while hearing monthly updates on the work within.
During the school board’s facilities and operations meeting in late January, Lynch and district Director of Facilities and Operations Bill Slawter said that since the radio towers were removed last fall, contractors have cleared trees and regraded the area to allow for staging of construction equipment for the new addition.
Trees have now been removed in a clearing just west of North Penn High School, where a new district transportation center will be built just north of the current one, at right, as seen from above on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (Photo courtesy of North Penn School District)Just south of the radio site, the new transportation building site has been cleared, and “that work commences probably in late March, or early April” after a building pad is finished there.
“So things are going to get busy, awfully quick,” Lynch said.
Natatorium opens
In December contractors finished work on the third floor of K-pod, the roof above that pod, and the natatorium at the high school, all of which are now being used by students, and “It was a great effort, in order to finish. There was a lot of last-minute work in order to get everything occupied, but it was overall a successful effort.”
North Penn High School students jump into the newly reopened swimming pool at the high school’s renovated Rick Carroll Natatorium in December 2025. (Photo courtesy of North Penn School District)Crews have since started similar repairs on the second floor of K-pod that will run into spring, Lynch said, and “each floor will go a little bit faster” as contractors perfect their tactics, with a goal of finishing the second floor by March 30.
“The turnover date is scheduled for the last week of March. We have a spring break coming at that time, and so everything seems to be coming together, that we’d be finished in advance,” Lynch said.
A clearing that will soon house a new transportation center just north of North Penn High School can be seen facing north toward Snyder Road, as seen from above on Feb. 17, 2026. (Photo courtesy of North Penn School District)Work on the first floor except for administrative offices would then run through the rest of the schoolyear, and those offices and the high school’s nurse suite would be renovated over the summer, with those scheduled to be done by the start of the 2026-27 schoolyear. Bid package two “will be with us for a few years,” and plan drawings are being finalized while contractors have already done the site work, including erosion controls and sediment basin clearing, before heavy snows hit the area in late January.
Bid package three, which would include the auditorium, music suite, H-pod and reconstruction of J-pod, is still in design and slated to be bid out in early 2027 with work starting in late 2028.
Charts used to track the work show “nearly 100 percent” of phase one third floor work now complete, the second floor 50 percent complete, and first floor work slated to be done by September, and all site work including the tree removal, utility line relocation, and a move of the high school’s propane fueling tank now done. So far, roughly $17 million has been paid out of the roughly $26.4 million estimated cost for that phase, and just over $800,000 remains out of $1.1 million budgeted for material allowances, he said, prior to change orders up for board approval in February.
If current project timelines hold, the new transportation building is slated to start construction in fall 2026 and be done in spring 2027, with demolition of the current building scheduled for that summer, while the A-pod addition has been slightly delayed due to permit approvals, and an early 2027 finishing date may slide to later that year.
Construction equipment and snow can be seen throughout the campus of North Penn High School, with the district transportation center at left, Crawford Stadium below, and school A-pod and H-pod at center and right, as seen on Feb. 17, 2026. (Photo courtesy of North Penn School District)Budget update
Of the total $259 million budget for the entire project, the first phase is estimated to cost just over $31 million including just over $4 million for contingencies, and “we’re looking good so far” and could roll over at least some of that contingency amount into later phases if not needed, Lynch added.
A new addition to monthly updates: the project construction manager also outlined the energy efficiency and sustainability features included in the renovations so far. Newer energy-efficient windows are projected to reduce heat loss by 76 percent and solar radiation by 50 percent, while added wall insulation is meant to cut thermal transmittance by roughly 70 percent, while new LED lighting and new HVAC equipment should also help cut the utility bills for the high school considerably.
“The general idea is that we’re trying to provide a more than 50 percent reduction in total energy use for each classroom,” Lynch said. “Each of the pods has their own little central (utility) plant, so that’s what makes renovation just a little bit easier, because we replace the central plant when we go from pod to pod.”
Two sets of change orders were discussed by the committee and voted ahead for full board approval in February, both of which Slawter said will partially draw from allowances already budgeted for the first phase.
Slawter said district staff are still discussing upgrades to the scoreboard at the high school natatorium, and discussing ways to split those costs between the district, swim team booster clubs, and other entities including the district Educational Foundation, with details to be presented at a future meeting.
“The new scoreboard’s running somewhere between $105,000 and $106,000, just because it’s not only the scoreboard: there’s some additional tile work, there’s some painting work, there’s patching work, and there’s multiple new conduits that have to be run, because it requires additional power and additional communication wiring,” Slawter said. “It’s not just, take one scoreboard down, put the other one up, it’s a lot more than that.”
North Penn’s school board next meets at 7 p.m. on Feb. 19 and the facilities and operations committee next meets at 7 p.m. on Feb. 24; for more information visit www.NPenn.org.
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