A new elementary school for children with autism and developmental disabilities is coming to Bancroft's Mount Laurel campus after township planners signed off on the project this past week. The two-story, 55,205-square-foot building will serve 160 students ages 3 to 11, with an opening targeted for 2028.
The Mount Laurel Planning Board voted to grant preliminary and final site plan approval during a virtual public hearing held over Zoom on October 8, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Per the application, Bancroft's plans call for an estimated 188 staff members to work with the children attending the school, a number the organization said exceeds expected enrollment because of the intensive needs of the student population. The new building is planned for former agricultural land that has since become a lawn on the southeast portion of Bancroft's Raymond & Joanne Welsh Campus.
A Campus Built for Growth
Bancroft's overall footprint in Mount Laurel spans 80 acres, a campus the planning board first approved back in 2016. The organization opened its current $75 million, 165,000-square-foot facility there in late 2017 after relocating from a landlocked 20-acre site in Haddonfield, where it had operated for more than 130 years, according to the same report. That existing campus currently serves special education students ages 12 to 21 and includes life-skills vocational infrastructure, among them on-campus mock ShopRite and Wawa retail training environments, per the Bancroft School's own description of its programs.
The new elementary school fills a gap in that continuum, extending Bancroft's services down to children as young as 3. School documents also mention a possible additional future expansion on the southwest part of the property, though they provide no further details about what that expansion might entail.
Soil Testing Raised, Then Resolved, Environmental Questions
Environmental soil testing by Dewberry Engineers Inc. identified naturally occurring arsenic in the soil at the proposed school site. The testing concluded the arsenic levels were not caused by past agricultural activities or chemical dumping and required no further investigation, the Inquirer reported.
Bancroft was founded in 1883 by Philadelphia schoolteacher Margaret Bancroft, making it one of the oldest providers of specialized education and residential programs for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the Mid-Atlantic, according to Aegis Property Group. President and CEO Toni Pergolin has led the nonprofit since 2006, according to a 2017 report from The Business Journals.
Demand Driven by Rising Autism Diagnoses
The expansion lands amid persistently high autism identification rates in New Jersey. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveillance data released in April 2025 found that 1 in 29 eight-year-old children, or 3.4%, in New Jersey were identified with autism spectrum disorder in 2022, among the highest rates in the country, per Autism NJ.
That demand has prompted investment elsewhere in the region. Inspira Health launched a state-funded, $3 million Autism Diagnostic Center in nearby Woodbury in April 2024 to help reduce diagnostic wait times for South Jersey families, according to Inspira Health. Mount Laurel's own public school district, which enrolled 4,336 students across eight traditional schools during the 2023-2024 academic year according to Ballotpedia, is among the local systems that often rely on specialized providers like Bancroft for out-of-district placements requiring intensive staff ratios.
A New Jersey Appellate Division court opinion issued in September 2026 described Bancroft NeuroHealth as a nonprofit and addressed its protection under the state's Charitable Immunity Act, according to New Jersey Courts.
