What you need to know:
LATEST NEWS–2026 New Year Update: A more detailed design has led to a major escalation in costs. The District is on a path to delay construction, but the Board is still committed to building a new middle school. While details have changed, the analyses and conclusions elsewhere in this website remain accurate.
The building being designed appears to be an expensive “Taj Mahal” that exceeds state standards for building cost.
UCFSD plans to spend over a quarter-billion dollars on an unneeded new school, and the School Board has not been straight with the public on the cost.
This financial burden will handicap the District’s ability to handle any new problems that may arise in the next thirty-five years.
Smaller-scale renovations to the middle school can solve essentially all its problems at a much cheaper price.
We need to have an open discussion about our options free from lies and distortion, which the school board refuses to engage in. Demand that this decision be reexamined!
Get more details by clicking on the links below:
- A new design has resulted in a major escalation of costs and a likely delay in construction, although the District still plans to move ahead.
- The District appears to be designing an expensive Taj Mahal. A referendum should be required under Act 34.
- Your share of the project cost is $800 per year over 35 years (average homeowner). It’s not the $42 per year the District wants you to believe.
- The District claims the current building is so deficient it must be torn down, but has avoided seriously considering the alternatives.
- The District’s communications concerning the building have been misleading and downright false, and important information has not been shared. What happened to honesty and transparency?
- The School Board has regularly ignored the community’s input and offers to help. The Board blew off a request from more than 100 taxpayers to hold a public hearing.
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Background
On February 18th, the Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board voted to solicit bids to design a new building to replace the Charles F. Patton Middle School (CFPMS). This design work is likely to cost at least $6 million. Superintendent Sanville has been pushing for a new middle school for over a year and throughout that period he has grossly misrepresented both the need for a new middle school and its cost. Dr. Sanville has repeatedly stated that it will cost the average school district taxpayer $42 per year. This is false.
Dr. Sanville has set a budget of $120 million. Simply divide $120 Million by the approximately 9400 taxpayers in the district and you get an average taxpayer cost of $12,700 each1. But it’s worse than that. To stay below the tax increase threshold that would trigger a referendum, the district resorted to creatively financing the new middle school over 35 years. The estimated cost with financing comes out to more than $260 Million or more than $27,500 per taxpayer, all to replace a perfectly good building2.
Why Should You Care?
Spending $260 Million on an incrementally better school building will max out the school district’s borrowing capacity so that we won’t have flexibility to pay for any other needs that come up. What if we need more money to pay the best teachers for performance or risk losing them to more dynamic charter schools? Sorry, you’re just gonna have to let the best teachers go. Maybe we need new hardware and software to infuse AI tools into education? That won’t be an option. Update the reading curriculum to catch up with Mississippi? Maybe in 35 years. A rational analysis would recognize that the District’s (and the taxpayer’s) resources are limited and maintain flexibility to address future needs, rather than blow everything to build a new, Taj Mahal middle school.
Spending more to improve educational outcomes and experience is a good investment for all residents. But UCFSD school taxes are already high, and academic performance has been falling for the past ~10 years3. The unnecessary cost of replacing the middle school will cripple the District’s ability to pay for other needs and incentivize prospective home buyers to choose other districts with better schools and lower taxes, impacting property values.
The district claims to have done a thorough analysis and that replacing CFPMS is the best value. In truth, their analysis of the problems completely overlooks options for maintaining CFPMS and jumps right to whether it’s feasible to replace it. And their financial analysis deceptively underestimates the cost to replace CFPMS.
If you don’t want the UCFSD School Board to waste your money on this boondoggle, you’re going to need to speak up. They’ve been dead set on building a new middle school from the beginning and the analysis they’ve done is all designed to justify that decision. We won’t have a chance at stopping this unless we show overwhelming community opposition. Please contact the school board at ucfboard@ucfsd.net, attend the monthly board meetings and work sessions, and sign up below for more information. For those with School Board elections this Fall, please query the candidates about their position on this issue.
Here is the School Board meeting schedule for 2025-2026.
Also note that Superintendent Sanville, for whom replacing the CFPMS became a priority and pet project, retired effective July 31. The several recent government investigations into Sanville’s actions and behavior may have contributed to his decision to retire. In any event, we now have a new Superintendent, Tim Hoffman. We have had some interactions with Mr. Hoffman, and are optimistic that there will be a more balanced approach to this issue, with greater opportunity for true public engagement.
Footnotes
1 Based on the District’s number of taxpayers derived from their statement that the average taxpayer pays $8500 toward an annual $80 MM of real estate taxes collected. ($80MM / $8500 per taxpayer = 9411 taxpayers) in Sanville’s February 14th MS Replacement Tax Impact communication.
2 “But the districts numbers don’t say $263 million.” No, because the district has not shared this cost with the public. The district’s financing estimate was only obtained by a local resident through a request under the Right-to-Know law (Pennsylvania’s version of the federal Freedom of Information Act.)
3 Most school ranking services show Unionville-Chadds Ford falling over the last 10-15 years. According to USNews & World Report, UHS is has fallen out of the Philadelphia area’s top 10. Scroll halfway down on PublicSchoolReview.com to see how UCFSD test scores and ranking have fallen over the last 10 years.
Sign up below to provide comments and receive more information on attending school board meetings and the like. We can also be reached at ucfsdtaxpayers@gmail.com.
Why the Rush to Replace Patton Middle School? 