Central Bucks Students Return To Class For 2023-24 School Year

DOYLESTOWN, PA — Central Bucks School District students are returning to class this week for the opening of the 2023-24 school year.

The new year begins with more than 3,000 faculty and staff serving more than 17,000 students in 15 elementary, five middle, and three high schools across the district.

"We are thrilled to welcome our students and families to Central Bucks and look forward to an exciting year of learning and growing," said Superintendent of Schools Dr. Abram Lucabaugh. "Our dedicated employees, strong academic programming, expanded student services, robust athletic offerings, and rich opportunities in the arts and humanities combine to make Central Bucks a dynamic place for students to learn and grow.”

Secondary students will again be returning to high schools ranked among the best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, with C.B. East ranked 14th in Pennsylvania and 572nd nationally, C.B. South as 46th in PA and 1,341st nationally, and C.B. West as 48th in PA and 1,373rd nationally.

“The rankings reflect the quality of our teachers, the support of our community, and the culture of excellence we pursue across the entire district," said Lucabaugh. "Our staff is dedicated to providing students with a high-quality educational experience that yields access, opportunity, and choice. Seeing our three high schools so highly ranked across the state, and here in Bucks County, is a point of pride, and a testament to this community prioritizing education as a necessary foundation for success in life.”

The annual rankings compare schools at the national, state, and local levels on factors such as academic performance, graduation rates, and college readiness, according to U.S. News, which reviewed 25,000 schools and ranked 17,680 of them.

The highest-ranked public schools in the 2023-24 Best High Schools national rankings are those whose students achieved exceptional scores on state assessments for math, reading, and science. These schools also had strong, underserved student performance, college readiness, curriculum breadth, and graduation rates.

According to Dr. Lucabaugh, this school year will bring enhanced security to the high schools with the planned expansion of the School Resource Officer program to Central Bucks West and Central Bucks East, coupled with the addition of security personnel at each of the district's middle schools.

"That has advanced our goal of maintaining a safe and secure learning environment," said Lucabaugh, noting that Central Bucks South already has an SRO in place.

The district is also awaiting approvals to engage a new system called "BusPatrol," which provides stop-arm enforcement via new 360-degree cameras installed inside and outside its fleet of buses.

When a school bus is stopped and its lights and stop-arm are activated, the "BusPatrol" cameras will capture incidents involving vehicles illegally passing the bus and potentially endangering students. Those incidents will then be passed on to local law enforcement for action.

Programmatically, planning is underway for the introduction of full-day kindergarten and a district-wide realignment of its grades in the fall of 2025, according to Lucabaugh.

The change will move its schools to a more traditional grade alignment with elementary schools moving to a grades K to 5 configuration, middle schools to grades 6-8, and high schools to grades 9-12. The change will give the district space at its elementary schools to begin offering full-day kindergarten while moving ninth grade from the middle to high school level, where students will have expanded opportunities for academic and athletic activities.

"We are also implementing MTSS (multi-tiered system of supports) in our middle and high schools to provide scaffolded academic supports, and we continue to design systems at each level that create space and time for students to receive academic intervention and enrichment,” said the superintendent.

In the area of capital projects, “Major projects include HVAC work to install central air at Lenape Middle School, the completion of a new fueling station for our transportation fleet, new playgrounds at Pine Run and Butler Elementary schools, and a paving project at Barclay Elementary," said Lucabaugh. "We are also preparing a bid for the installation of new interior camera systems in all 15 elementary schools.”