Resident Says District Left Usable Supplies in Demolished Building

A Warminster resident took a walk last week around some of the older McDonald Elementary classrooms still standing at the demolition site on Street Road and found piles of books and supplies, which she feels should not have been left behind.

"I came back with cardboard boxes and filled up seven of them with books," said Tricia Hoffman. "There were textbooks, a cabinet filled with a hundred of those books you get from the Scholastic catalog, construction paper."

Hoffman was appalled at the amount of books and paper that had been left for the demolition crew to remove. Her daughter teaches in Philadelphia and could definitely find a use for the materials, Hoffman said.

"They don't even have a library," she said. "My daughter gets one box of paper for the whole school year. Anything more than that comes out of her pocket."

Hoffman's son alerted her to the leftover books after he and his friends went walking through the project site in the evening hours last week. She investigated the rooms herself and found the books. Hoffman contacted Centennial Superintendent Dr. Joyce Mundy, who said she would look into the situation, and also advised Hoffman to remain clear of the demolition site.

"That's first and foremost," said Mundy. "That is an active demolition site, and it's just not safe to walk around there at night."

Mundy said that she made two sweeps of the old McDonald Elementary before demolition began and everything that was deemed salvageable had been removed. Anything the district did not keep was donated to other organizations. 

Most of the textbooks Hoffman found dated back to 1985, samples received by the school during regular curriculum updates.

"Our curriculum office has the boxes that Ms. Hoffman put together, and I will review their contents," said Mundy. "We were very responsible about how we swept and cleared the rooms of materials."

Mundy says the Warminster Police Department has been alerted about possible trespassing on the demolition site, and she expects patrols to be stepped up.