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Classrooms Facilities
Assistance Program
By Robert Rhoades, Senior Scribe
www.darkecountyseniors.us
Bruce
Miller of Garmann/Miller provided information and
conducted voting on various questions regarding the Master Plan the
Schools Facilities Commission is helping the Greenville School District
formulate. (L. Bliss photo)
“We need to make sure the residents of Greenville School District
understand that the renewal levy that will be on May 3rd ballot has
nothing to do with buildings. That will be a renewal of an already
existing operating levy that has to be renewed every five years. It
will add no new taxes to anyone. We are a ways away from even knowing
what we will recommend to the voters regarding facilities.” explained
Greenville Schools Superintendant Susie Riegle.
The second meeting of the Greenville City School’s Classrooms
Facilities Assistance Program committee met at Woodland Heights school
Tuesday evening. The meeting was very well attended and began
immediately after the regular School Board Meeting. Hopefully the good
attendance means that we are headed in the right direction.
Garman/Miller Architects -Engineers of Minster facilitated the
meeting. They have vast experience in the field of building
schools and a complete working knowledge of the Ohio Schools Facilities
Commission’s Classroom Facilities Assistance Program (CFAP). This
program will provide much of the funding for building new classroom
space in the Greenville City School District. There are a number
of options on the table and these were brought about by an assessment
of all of our schools. This assessment revealed that only the
High School was a candidate for rehabilitation. This was brought
out at the first meeting and committee members have spent much time in
the interim taking tours of schools in our district as well as new
schools in other districts. On average, it costs $1.70 per sq.
ft. to operate a school building. The new buildings that were
toured can be operated for 70 cents per sq. ft because of energy saving
design and new technology in heating and cooling, electrical and
appliances.
The school board has a number of building configurations to choose
from. One of the products of the committee’s deliberations is to
assist the BOE in making this decision. By May of 2011, a
decision must be made on which Master Plan will be used to guarantee
the State’s offer of funding. If the decision is YES then there
will be a one year window to secure a bond issue to fund the
school. The first opportunity for the bond levy will be the
November 2011 election.
The next meeting will be held after the April 19th board meeting
where we will look at options and decide which option to go with.
Garman/Miller used a voting program where all participants at the
meeting were able to vote on the various options. Since most
people attending had also taken tours of the districts buildings, the
first vote on whether we needed new buildings showed that 95% strongly
agreed and 5% somewhat agreed that there was a significant
problem. The Ohio Schools Facility Commission will provide a
maximum of $26,312,000 to complete this project. Greenville’s
portion will be $67,237,000.
The next question that needed an answer was did the committee feel that
we should move ahead by taking the OSFC offer of $26,000,000 and build
to an approved Master Plan. Meeting attendees voted 100% to take
the offer. This means that at some point the bond levy will be
placed on the ballot for all voters in the district to approve.
There a number of Master Plan options to be considered and these
consist of how the voters want the buildings configured such as to
build a new K-8 and renovate the high school or renovate the high
school for K-8 and build a new high school. In all there were 8
different options and a lot of discussion.
The next question was probably the hardest and that was whether the
committee felt that a bond levy can be passed. This was the vote
of the evening with the widest areas of disagreement. In all most
people felt that it would be good to do the project as a segmented
project. This means that state money would be guaranteed and that
we would be able to start the project and complete the whole thing as
we can. It allows us the most flexibility. As a segmented
project we needed to decide which buildings need the most help the
soonest. Unfortunately this is a hard question and the vote on
this was widely separated. The options were K-5, 6-8 or 9-12 with
a career technology center. All of the elementary buildings are
in dire need as was evidenced in the tours that we took. All have
significant boiler problems. Woodland has major leaks in the
steam piping which have been patched over and over. It also has
asbestos laden ceiling in all rooms and hallways except the gym.
Additionally it is on well water which must be treated and has its own
sewage plant.
None the buildings have fire protection and only a couple are tied into
a central station alarm. South, East and the Jr. High have
electrical panels which are no longer in production meaning that if a
breaker goes bad, it cannot be replaced. The list is endless.
What will happen now is that Garmann/Miller will take the information
that we gave them and come up with more refinement on the options that
we gave them. This will give more detailed costs and be available
for the next meeting.
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