The Uniontown Area School District's school board voted last night to move forward with closing a middle school and consolidating it, five to four.

When discussions of closing and consolidating schools for this district began in December of last year, the school board told KDKA that they would have to take such measures because enrollment in the district had dwindled, and that trend was expected to continue.

All of this combined with the need to save money, forced district leaders to vote to close AJ McMullen Middle School and consider consolidation and retooling on how students are organized in its buildings. 

Julia Mills from Farmington, was devastated to hear that AJ McMullen will likely be closing.

"I understand that enrolments are down," said Mills. "I just wish more people would come and raise their families here, because I went to school there, all three years, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, and it is just some of my fondest memories."

The plan includes not only closing AJ McMullen Middle School, but renovating Marclay Elementary School into both an elementary and middle school.

AJ McMullen Middle School has 145 students, but holds 440 students, while Marclay Elementary has 86 students and holds up to 350 students.

The school board feels that it just makes more sense to consolidate these two schools and have 231 students under one roof at Marclay.

One point of concern over this consolidation is transportation to and from school for these mountain communities. School parent, Courtney Fisher addressed this directly with the school board at Monday night's meeting.

"This is going to be a huge transition to the mountain community," said Fisher. "We need to make sure we're getting things like that further in advance - parent pick-up times are going to need to be communicated. We need to communicate as much as we can to these mountain families who are affected by this transition, because it is a big transition, especially for some of our special needs students who are used to certain schools and certain routines."

Even though the school board did approve the closing of AJ McMullen, they did not approve the $7 million bond measure that will be needed to do renovations on the Marclay school.

The next school board meeting will be Monday, April 7th.