Burns guides Bishop McCort to state grant to replace aging gym floor
$178,500 will fund new, safe playing surface
Rep. Frank Burns March 23, 2026 | 10:56 AM
JOHNSTOWN, March 23 – The 49-year-old gym floor at Bishop McCort – so badly splintered and heaving that rising planks had to regularly be screwed and bolted down to avert hazards – is being replaced due to a $178,500 state grant credited to state Rep. Frank Burns.
Tom Smith, Bishop McCort principal and chief administrative officer, said the process began when Burns came to personally inspect the floor. It’s where hundreds of games and matches per year are played by the school’s junior and senior high boys’ and girls’ basketball and wrestling teams, its girls’ volleyball teams, and non-school K–6 Youth League basketball teams “from all over” that play on weekends from November through February.
“Frank came down, took the time to meet me, and walked the whole floor,” Smith said. “He looked at the splintering and said, ‘Tom, you’re absolutely right. It’s bad.’”
Smith said that since McCort isn’t a public school, Burns directed him toward applying for a Local Share Account grant, for which the private school was eligible.
“Frank helped us out tremendously. We didn’t even know about those grants,” Smith said. “We worked on that pretty diligently, we were awarded that grant, and now we’re going to get a new gym floor, with the goal of having it installed this summer for the upcoming school year.”
Smith fully credits Burns as a key factor, adding, “Frank’s been amazing. If it wasn’t for Frank, we wouldn’t have got that grant. Guaranteed.”
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“Frank helped us out tremendously. We didn’t even know about those grants … Frank’s been amazing. If it wasn’t for Frank, we wouldn’t have got that grant. Guaranteed.” – Tom Smith, Bishop McCort principal and chief administrative officer.
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Smith said replacing the gym floor without the state grant would have been a “major hardship” financially for Bishop McCort, whose 681 students consist of 360 in grades 7–12 and 321 in kindergarten through grade 6.
“We don’t get much public funding, and this (project) is going to have a major impact on thousands of kids,” Smith said. “The existing floor has been sanded down and painted so many times that it’s not feasible to do anymore. This will be the last season we can play on that floor.”
Burns said when he met with Smith a year ago, he immediately recognized that successfully acquiring state funding to replace the gym floor hinged on an eligible entity making an application to the proper grant program.
“I talked with them, got them the parameters on how they could apply, what they needed to do,” Burns said. “Because they are not a public school, they applied through the county and were able to get the money through an LSA grant.”
Burns added, “This wasn’t something that happened overnight. I was working closely with Tom Smith to make sure he could apply on behalf of the school, and that they would be eligible. A part of it was that they open the gym up so many days a year for public basketball leagues to play there.”
Smith also chalks up the funding success to something else: “Frank understands the importance of youth sports.”