A town hall concerning Moore Elementary School will be held 6 p.m. April 4 at the school, 2835 Mountain View Drive, Moore Township.

“The Northampton Area School District will hold an elementary configuration meeting to discuss whether or not to keep Moore Elementary School open as a fifth elementary school in the district,” the school district website announced Feb. 28.

Topics to be discussed, according to the website, are academics, financial impact for district residents, personnel, redistricting of students and transportation.

By a voice vote of 8-0, with one school director absent, the NASD Board of Education decided at the Feb. 12 meeting to hold the meeting concerning Moore after the proposal for a town hall was made by school Director Josh Harris.

The meeting will be informational. The school board is not expected to take action at the meeting.

The NASD administration held a walk-through of Moore Elementary Jan. 17 for school directors.

“What I’m asking the board to do is make a final decision by the end of the fiscal school year, by June (2024),” NASD Superintendent of Schools Joseph S. Kovalchik said at the Feb. 12 meeting concerning Moore Elementary.

The NASD school board voted 5-4 at its Dec. 18, 2023, meeting to reaffirm the Route 329 elementary school and education center project at Seemsville Road in East Allen Township.

Work on the project began Dec. 1, 2023. The project is to cost $75,858,529.

“I feel relieved that the administration can now continue construction of the Route 329 project, make a decision on Moore Elementary School and consider staffing and redistricting,” Kovalchik said in response to the Dec. 18, 2023, vote.

A unanimous 9-0 straw poll vote at the Aug. 14, 2023, meeting, backed continuing Moore as an education facility, but an official vote has not been taken.

The 28-page Moore Elementary School draft study, which is posted on the district website, nasdschools.org, was presented at the Nov. 13, 2023, school board meeting. Cost estimates for the one-story (with a two-story classroom wing) Moore Elementary building, constructed in 1956 with additions and renovations in 1973, are $23,374,650 for a partial renovation and $47,535,150 for a full renovation.

In other business at the Feb. 12 board meeting, school directors voted 8-0 to accept the resignation of 12 teachers for retirement, effective the last teacher day of the 2023-24 school year: Cynthia Heffley, special education teacher, Lehigh Elementary School; Michael Fister, music teacher, Col. John Siegfried Elementary School; Joanne Bryant, second-grade teacher, Lehigh Elementary; Nancy Stover, instructional assistant, Lehigh Elementary; Kimberly Krempasky, teacher, Northampton Area Middle School; MaryBeth Flisser, instructional assistant, George Wolf Elementary School; Sharon Strohler, certified school nurse, George Wolf Elementary; Susan Yorty, instructional assistant, Northampton Area High School; Robert Lawlor, fifth-grade teacher, George Wolf Elementary; Kathryn Schaffer, hall monitor, NAHS; John Ilgenfritz, special education teacher, NAHS; and Anita Mateyak, business teacher, NAHS.

At the Feb. 12 board meeting, school directors voted 8-0 to accept the resignations of Tina Erkinger, curriculum secretary, as of Jan. 5; Carole Torbinski, security guard, NAMS, effective Feb. 1; Marcia McKay, cafeteria monitor, Franklin Elementary School, as of March 1; Rebecca Miller, science teacher, NAHS, effective Jan. 5; and Jennifer Edwards, instructional assistant-study hall monitor, effective Jan. 31.

The school board next meets 6:30 p.m. March 11 in the NAHS auditorium, 1619 Laubach Ave., Northampton.