By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times

The Coatesville Area School District Board of Education called a special meeting for Tuesday to purchase this $2.8 million office building to replace the Benner Administration building and house a new district health care center.

CALN — The Coatesville Area School District appears poised to purchase a $2.8 million building to replace the Benner Administration Building — and potentially host a health clinic for employees — and have called a special full board meeting Tuesday night to ratify the purchase.

The building, located just off Lincoln Highway in Caln is a 33,360-foot office building, would be used to house school district administration offices and a health care facility for employees.

This is the second time in 2013 that the district has moved forward with plans to purchase a building — a previous $3.45 million plan to buy a Sadsbury building ended when public uproar over the purchase led to it being halted.

Board members and district officials have claimed that the district needs to establish its own health facility, in order to cut health care costs for employees by some $500,000 a year. The same officials warned this past spring that a failure to open the health care center would lead to the layoffs of teaching staff to make up the difference in the budget.

The rationale for leaving Benner — the original building that housed Coatesville High School, which dates back to 1915 — is the high cost of operating the building. Officials expect to sell Benner once all district offices are moved into a new building.