Midstate school district face growing calls to stop eminent domain move

(Mechanicsburg) — Calls are growing louder for a midstate school district to halt its plans to acquire preserved farmland for future development.

The rapidly-growing Cumberland Valley School District has triggered the eminent domain process to take 100 acres of land known as the McCormick Farm.

The land is privately owned, but the nonprofit Natural Lands holds a conservation easement. That states no development can happen on the site, unless it is taken by eminent domain.

The group is objecting in court and now has the support of the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners, which voted to file a friends of the court brief. Commissioners say the district is pitting two public interests against each other.

District Superintendent Frederick S. Withum III says it’s up to the citizenry — who elected and are represented by the school board — to decide what the best interest is.

“And I think that’s where the fundamental question comes down,” Withum said. “Will it better serve as a farm, historic farm, or will it better serve as a school, or some hybrid of both of those things?”

The school district is planning to hold a town hall-style meeting next month to explain the board’s process.

Withum says the district has seen an average of two percent student growth each year for the past decade.

There’s no sign of the trend slowing down, with hundreds of new homes planned for construction in the next few years.

“With conservative estimates, we can literally gain a whole elementary school full of students–our average elementary-sized school, full of students in the next five years,” Withum said.