You can experience 21st-century learning this August in Northampton Area School District. That’s when the public will be offered tours of the new Lehigh Elementary School.

Open houses are set for 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Aug. 14 and 5-8:30 p.m. Aug. 18 at the new building, 800 Blue Mountain Drive, Lehigh Township.

Lehigh Elementary School Principal Cassandra Herr will symbolically ring the red school bell that was moved from its perch at the old school to a wall outside the new school Aug. 30 when she welcomes students for the start of the 2021-22 NASD school year.

The last day of classes in the old school was June 7.

“You should be in pretty good shape for the next 25 to 30 years,” NASD Superintendent of Schools Joseph S. Kovalchik said to school directors, administrators and the media during an April 19 preview tour inside the new building. Also at the tour were Jay Clough, KCBA Architects principal, and Arif Fazil, D’Huy Engineering Inc. project engineer.

“A room like this is essential for 21st-century learning,” Kovalchik said about the school’s two-story STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) classroom.

The new elementary school can handle 700 students in grades K-5. The old school, which accommodated 530 students, will be demolished.

Sports fields will be on the site of the old school. Parent/guardian and school bus pickup and drop-off traffic flow will be reconfigured. Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is to improve Blue Mountain Drive to mitigate motorists’ sightline problems at the school entrance.

The new 97,000-square-foot facility will house educational and community functions, including a multipurpose gymnasium/auditorium and cafeteria with seating for 300.

“Facilitation of the district’s modern educational program was a key project objective, and this shaped both the program and layout of the new building,” according to the KCBA website. “At the building’s core near the entry, a series of common spaces are easily accessible to all classrooms: the library, arts and music suites and a large STEAM lab outfitted to host a wide range of experiments and activities. In the midst of the classroom segment, a separate STEAM classroom establishes a more flexible, free-form, two-story collaboration area that is visually linked to a second-story media studio.”

Other building highlights include walls built of concrete masonry, 26 desks per classroom and a secure turf-covered courtyard.

The third- through fifth-grade classrooms will be on the second floor, and there will be classrooms for small-group instruction. The student TV studio can be controlled by iPads.

The new building adds a fifth kindergarten classroom, seven additional classrooms - an increase from 13 to 20 - and the STEAM lab and classroom spaces.

The NASD school board members voted Oct. 23, 2017, to authorize the new school project.

D’Huy Engineering said renovating the old 888,000-square-foot school would cost $31.9 million, bringing the project cost to $35.7 million, including demolition of the old school.

Problems at the old school included roofing; heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems with noisy classroom unit ventilation systems; access by buses and parents’ cars; security; undersized classrooms (843 square feet rather than the recommended 1,000 square feet); too few classrooms; and Americans with Disabilities Act noncompliance bathrooms, ramps and other areas.

Renovations and additions at Lehigh Elementary, which was built in 1954, were completed in 1962, 1986 and 2002.

“I worked like the dickens to know where the bell coming from the old school came from,” school Director Robert Mentzell said to those on the tour. “It’s safe to say it came from a former school building.”

Clough reported the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown had little impact on the construction project timeline.

“We only lost about five weeks, but we made it up,” Clough said.

“Despite COVID-19, we are finishing on schedule,” agreed Fazil.