Photo / Provided, City of Bangor, Haley Ward
An aerial photo shows the existing Penobscot Christian School building on Ohio Street and the site of the planned expansion, marked by the blue icon.
Updated: August 21, 2024
Bangor religious school plans $2M expansion, aims to double enrollment
Photo / Provided, City of Bangor
Penobscot Christian School, whose main campus is at 1423 Ohio St. in Bangor, plans to build a 22,500-square-foot addition there.
By William Hall
A private, religious school in Bangor got the city's OK Tuesday to build a 22,500-square-foot addition — enough room to double enrollment — and hopes to break ground next month.
Penobscot Christian School currently teaches about 200 students from pre-K through grade 12, occupying 9,500 square feet of space on a main campus at 1423 Ohio St., just north of Bangor International Airport.
But for the past several years, as the school has grown, junior high and high school students have been attending class a couple of miles away.
With last night's unanimous site plan approval from the Bangor Planning Board, Penobscot Christian can move ahead with a $2 million expansion on the six-acre main campus. The property has an assessed value of $1.3 million, according to city tax rolls.
After the build-out is complete, junior high and high school students would return to the Ohio Street location, consolidating all of Penobscot Christian's operations back where they've been since the 1990s.
The expansion still needs final permits, but work may get underway in September and would run through 2025, according to Bangor-based Haley Ward Inc., the engineering firm for the project.
It consists of two phases, the first of which is a 4,500-square-foot classroom building. Phase two would create an 18,000-square-foot facility with a gym, a kitchen and more classrooms. Plans also call for the addition of 102 parking spaces.
The satellite location, a former church at 1520 Union St. that PCS purchased in 2019 for $225,000, would go up for sale, the head of school, Alison Hamilton, told Mainebiz.
"Our motivation for this project is the need for increased space. We need room to provide for growing enrollment," she said. "Our parents, our staff and our extended community are very excited about this project."
At the planning board meeting, however, one member of the public voiced concerns about the expansion. Laurie Lizotte, whose back yard abuts the PCS property, said she had questions about the size of the new buildings, their outdoor lighting, and additional noise that might be created. "It's all about privacy," she said.
A Haley Ward senior project manager, Chip Haskell, explained that the orientation of the buildings and the use of plantings would provide a buffer between the school and its neighbors. By the end of the discussion, Lizotte appeared to be satisfied with those answers.
Schooling boom
In Bangor and across the U.S., parents and students are seeking out Christian schools as an alternative to traditional public education.
An October 2021 report by the New York Times described "a boom in conservative Christian schooling, driven nationwide by a combination of pandemic frustrations and rising parental anxieties around how schools handle education on issues including race and the rights of transgender students."
During the 2019-20 school year, federal statistics show, about 7% of the 54 million American schoolchildren attended religious schools, including roughly 600,000 in "conservative Christian" institutions.
That enrollment includes the students at Penobscot Christian, as well as another institution in Bangor. At 1476 Broadway, a five-minute drive from PCS, about 300 students attend Bangor Christian Schools, which is affiliated with the Baptist faith.
PCS espouses a more general Christian approach to education. But regardless of the specific denomination, such schools are growing. Christian schools with a "classical" curriculum, such as PCS, are especially on the rise.
There are about 1,000 of those schools nationwide, according to a February report by Arcadia Education, a national consulting firm. Together they enroll about 230,000 students. By 2035, the enrollment is expected to exceed 300,000.
Photo / Provided, City of Bangor, Haley Ward
An aerial photo shows the location of Penobscot Christian School in Bangor, just north of Bangor International Airport. The school plans to build a 22,500 addition on its property at 1423 Ohio St.
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