School District

Date of formation is unclear–existed prior to 1919-per reference to its activities in January 16, 1919 edition of the Ambler Gazette

The School Board may be the subject of administrative proceedings under the procedures of the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Office of Dispute Resolution with respect to its actions involving special education students. To date, the district has been the subject of eight proceedings that resulted in opinions being issued by hearing officers. Of those, in five the District prevailed; in in two the district prevailed in part, and in one the parents prevailed, requiring the district pay private school tuition. One of those matters required seven hearing days, and the most recent necessitated issuance of a 27-page opinion.

There may also be appeals of teacher tenure denials to administrative process within the Pennsylvania Department of Education. No public record of any appeals involving the Upper Dublin School district have found to date.

Entities Related to Upper Dublin School District

Upper Dublin School Authority (1952?-post 1990)

William Robert Paynter, The Organization and Operation of School District Authorities (Univ. of Pittsburgh, Proquest Dissertation Publishing (1956).

Board Members

William Starke, president and other offices, 28 years –died 1987 (in 1950 he owned a orchid grove on west side of Jarrettown Rd. from what is now Foxbury to Aidenn Lair

Adelbert Schroeder-died in 1977 (also on Bd of Commissioners per his obit)

Solicitor

Elmer Menges 1958-1988

Does the School Authority still exist? No—when did it end? 1988?

School Districts Insurance Consortium

School Districts Service Consortium

School Districts Service Corp.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS Buildings (see list and construction dates in Lead Exposure Risks and Responses in Pennsylvania, Report of the Advisory Committee and Task Force on Lead Exposure, Joint State Government Commission (April 30, 2019) (identifying issue to lead exposure for buildings built before 1959):

District Administration Building-1997 (following acquisition of Cherry Lane Farm)

Schools that were in use in 1945 or thereafter:

(Matthias) Sheeleigh High School (1907-1914), thereafter Sheeleigh Elementary School until 1968 (torn down in 1970s, later became Sheeleigh Park)

East Oreland Elementary (DATE)

North Glenside Elementary School-(1928-1964)

Thomas Fitzwater Elementary -1962

Fort Washington Elementary-1962

Three Tuns Elementary (first authorized as an elementary school and later, in 1978, converted to Three Tuns Junior High School, closed in 1982 (when students enrollments were dropping), torn down in 1985 (the controversy involving the decision to tear down the only district school with wall-to-wall air conditioning, with the site sold to a developer of a townhouse development, was one of the many controversies that caused turmoil in township politics during the 1970s and 1980s, as the township experienced very rapid development, sporadic increases in school-age population and tax increases to pay for increased facility costs for the growing population)

Jarrettown Elementary-1955

Sandy Run Elementary (1965 or 67?) (designed by the famed Philadelphia architects, Vincent Kling Partners, retained by the Upper Dublin School Authority, and both separately involved in litigation with Framlau Corp. thereafter), then became Sandy Run Jr. High (1978), then Sandy Run Middle School-rebuilt 2020

Upper Dublin High School-1949-1951 (then a Junior-Senior High School), 1955, addition 1959 (site had adjoining Junior High until Sandy Run became a Junior High School in 1978), 1965, rebuilt, after 1997 referendum, 2003

Prior to construction of the high school, Upper Dublin students attending high school were sent to neighboring communities with Upper Dublin School District compensating the receiving district; the first high school graduating class was in 1955). Prior to that neighboring school districts with high schools, Abington and Ambler (and likely Upper Moreland) accepted high school age students residing in Upper Dublin.

Maple Glen Elementary-2000

School Facilities Plan /1978: A Plan for Montgomery County’s Future (Montgomery County Planning Comm’n 1978)

Donna Shaw, Vote to sell school would end long battle, Inquirer (July 23, 1984)

According to a blog note dated January 24, 2009 (in a blog devoted to Three Tuns) purported to be by John Hannabach, the then UD school board president in the 1980s, the school board voted to convert Three Tuns, the newest Upper Dublin School District building, and the only one with wall-to-wall air conditioning, into the district’s high school, while selling the site of the existing high school on Loch Alsh to Temple University, but the succeeding school board reversed that decision, deciding instead to sell the Three Tuns site to a private developer to construct townhouses and use those funds to renovate the existing high school building. The Three Tuns building was demolished in 1989 and the property was sold to the developer of Meadowview.

Willow Development Corp. that had proposed a health-care facility at the former Three Tuns School site is proposing (successfully) to instead construct a residential development with minimum age restriction lowered from 60 to 42. “Earlier, the board had changed the zoning from residential to institutional to accommodate the facility, [Zollo] said. Willow Development encountered financial difficulties in the planning stage and halted the project last year, after prospective purchasers had deposited $336,500. Lat month, a Montgomery County judge ordered the firm to repay $80,000 immediately to depositors, who had filed a lawsuit seeking return of their money.”

Theresa Sullivan Barger, New plans for Three Tuns site, Philadelphia Inquirer, p. 120 (June 12, 1986).

The site was ultimately developed as Bell-Aire. (add detail-is it age-restricted?)

These controversies may have contributed to the 1991 defeat of Pat Zollo, the long-time Upper Dublin Board President, for re-election to a fourth? term as Ward 1 Township Commissioner.

See Inquirer article-proposal also included selling Sandy Run Elementary.

Although those protesting new developments often make valuable points and have succeeded in securing changes, the arguments most often raised unsuccessfully are traffic and impact on property values. Traffic counts considered in planning are at the time the proposed development is being considered, and they do not consider future developments, whether in Upper Dublin or neighboring municipalities.

One example of this collateral impact that affected Upper Dublin is the closure and now decades delayed redevelopment of the Willow Grove Naval Air Station. Horsham had planned for creating a mini-city at the site as early as 2002 and thereafter, but environmental issues have stalled that development.

Similarly, the development of the shopping complex on Welsh Road, primarily developed through Goodman Properties, has contributed congestion on Welsh Road, and is now compounded by BET’s development of the Promenade.

Although Upper Dublin had some control over The Promenade, it had no ability to stop the development on the Horsham side of Welsh Road. Horsham had long seen that area, distant from any of its residential areas, had a strong interest in commercial development there while nearby residential developments in Upper Dublin had no means under Pennsylvania law of affecting Horsham’s municipal decision-making.

Those opposing development frequently assert that nearby non-single family housing will adversely affect the property values of their homes.

Three areas that have generated considerable neighborhood opposition have been Mattison Estates, Dresher Estates (now known as Dresher Estates by Priority Life Care) and the siting of the fire station on Fort Washington Avenue. Looking at home sales records from the Montgomery County Bureau of Property Assessment, from a study by this author of the adjacent neighborhoods, the perceived threats to property values do not seem to have arisen.