Students at St. Francis of Assisi Parish School in Springfield, Delaware County, return to a rebuilt campus Tuesday, nearly two years after a fire tore through the building housing its youngest grades. A ribbon cutting is scheduled for 8 a.m. Tuesday at the primary building, marking the formal end of a rebuilding effort that stretched across two school years.
The school, a Catholic institution nearly 100 years old, will also host an open house on Sunday, September 13, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. so families can tour the new space before the school year gets fully underway. As NBC10 Philadelphia reports, the school community planned and constructed the new space, which is now ready to welcome students for the new school year.
The fire broke out in October 2024, causing significant damage to the building that housed pre-K, kindergarten, first-grade and third-grade students. No one was injured. According to OSV News, the two-alarm blaze broke out shortly before 5 p.m. on the building's second floor and required roughly five hours of firefighting effort from more than 15 local fire companies. The fire destroyed the roof and upper floor of the primary school building, though it caused no injuries.
Younger Grades Relocated While Investigators Sorted Out the Cause
In the fire's immediate aftermath, students were forced to temporarily relocate to St. Kevin Parish School, a nearby facility whose own elementary school had closed in 2010. Per St. Kevin Parish, the site underwent plumbing repairs and air conditioning installations to accommodate the displaced St. Francis students and staff for two school years, with the parish making its unused building available immediately after the fire.
A multi-agency investigation followed the fire, involving Springfield Township Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Pennsylvania State Police fire marshal, and the Delaware County District Attorney's Criminal Investigation Division, according to OSV News. The 2024 fire had spared the adjacent parish church building and the upper-grade school structure, which allowed older grades and parish functions to continue with minimal interruption while the primary building was rebuilt.
A Community Effort Funded the Rebuild
The path back to a finished campus leaned heavily on both institutional and grassroots fundraising. Archdiocesan secondary schools across the Philadelphia region raised $20,500 to assist St. Francis of Assisi Parish School, presenting the funds to parish leadership in April 2025, according to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Around the same time, six months after the fire, parents and community members had raised over $20,000 locally, even as uncertainty remained about whether the damaged structure would be fully rebuilt or replaced, per reporting from FOX 29 Philadelphia.
Local small business owner Vincent Sculli also stepped in, creating a community fundraiser in August 2025 that sold first-responder trading cards sponsored by local businesses. The initiative, featuring local police officers, firefighters, and EMTs, raised more than $7,100 for the rebuilding effort, according to CBS News. Students themselves joined the effort in February 2026, when the St. Francis of Assisi Student Council launched the “Rebuilding SFA Brick by Brick” initiative, selling custom engraved bricks to donors that will be permanently installed as part of the renewed campus.
What Comes Next for the Temporary Host Site
As St. Francis prepared to vacate the host site in late 2025, St. Kevin Parish entered lease negotiations with Catholic Charities of Philadelphia to repurpose the school building for administrative offices, according to the parish. St. Kevin Parish is also preparing for its own 75th anniversary in 2030, giving the arrangement a longer-term role in the parish's plans beyond simply housing the displaced students.
St. Francis of Assisi School, previously designated by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as a School of Distinguished Instruction, has served generations of families in Delaware County since its founding in 1929. With Tuesday's ribbon cutting and the reopening of the primary building, the school community closes out a nearly two-year chapter defined by relocation, investigation, and steady fundraising, and returns its youngest students to a campus built new from the fire's aftermath.
