An injunction request filed by Rush Township to prevent Tamaqua Area School District from changing the use of one its elementary schools has been rebuffed.

Township solicitor Chris Riedlinger told the township's board of supervisors on Thursday that a hearing on the township's petition was held earlier this month.However, Riedlinger said the injunction request supervisors filed with Schuylkill County Court to prevent the district from changing the use of the former Rush Township Elementary School in Hometown to an academy was declined.As a result, Riedlinger said the matter will once again go before the township's zoning hearing board, likely sometime in late October, early November.Contacted this morning, district Superintendent Carol Makuta said the former Rush Township Elementary School is now known simply as Rush.Makuta said the Rush facility is now a K-12 setting that offers alternative education, regular education, special education, and school to work programs.At last count, Makuta said there were 31 students who are taught by highly qualified teachers. The ratio is three students to an adult, she said."The (state) Department of Education recognizes that this is an appropriate program," Makuta said.Before the end of last school year in June, Makuta said the district has used the school to educate students in kindergarten and first grade, which had been the case since 2011.Before that, students in kindergarten through fifth grade attended, and before that, it was kindergarten through sixth, she said.Makuta said the students who had attended Rush Elementary now attend Tamaqua Elementary School."At Tamaqua Elementary, the students who were going up to the K-1 setting, many of those students were from the Borough of Tamaqua, so they're really closer to home," she said."The children who were pulled from the community of Rush Township were far less in number than the Tamaqua Borough representation, and I have heard no complaints of that."Makuta said that Tamaqua Elementary last year had been configured to grades 2-5. This year, it's been configured to K-5, she said.She said the district has been affiliated with Behavioral Health Associates of Lehighton "for at least five years.""During that time, we have sent our students to the Lehighton site and Jim Thorpe site, so now we've brought those students closer to home," she said. "We are contracting our services with them because they are specialized programs."The township said the school's property, located at 50 Meadow Ave. in Tamaqua, is an R-4 zone, meaning a school is a use permitted by special exception, but not by right.The district's use of the parcel as a school predates the enactment of the township's zoning ordinance, thus making the district's use of the parcel as a school a nonconforming use.The township has argued that any change to that use cannot be made unless a special exception is obtained from the township's zoning hearing board before changing its use, even if the use is being changed from one nonconforming use to another nonconforming use within the same classification.The district has not obtained a special exception for its proposed change of use.In July, the township's zoning board met to consider the district's appeal of a notice of violation issued by township zoning officer Bill McMullen.The township contended that the district's proposed use of the school did not comply with zoning regulations.Following testimony, the board unanimously voted to withdraw the violation.The district has asked the PDE to allow it to change the school to an academy.