A letter to all GCSD residents
By Bob Rhoades 

Over a period of time such as 100 years, lots of things happen in a town. In 1911 when the South Elementary School was constructed electricity had not yet been brought to Greenville.  It was a state of the art school for its day, large enough for the enrollment of the day and some growth in the district.  Forty years later, around 1950 the monstrous East building gave way to the current East School and the South and North buildings were added onto.  The plumbing, lighting and heating systems except for some boiler replacements are the same. The Former High School Building, which is now the Jr. High entered the picture and is now in the same condition.   Washington Twp. School was also given to the District along with the students who attended it.  The Greenville City School District didn’t build any new buildings but gained a lot of kids.  

After all that time it was 1960 and people began to ask how long the bulging seams of the district could last.  The decision was made to build a new high school in the park. It opened in 1963 and is the last building built in the GCSD.  It was added onto a couple years later then a vocational building added. 

Last but not least, the Gettysburg School District board succumbed to the pressure of the eternal money crunch.  They petitioned the Greenville City School District to come into the district and the District acquired another building and the students in that building.  So here we ALL are in 2013 with a lot of very old buildings.  

The Greenville Twp. Board of Education decided that consolidation of the one room schools into the Greenville Twp. School on SR 118 north of town should happen.  But a couple of years after it opened, the GTBOE petitioned GCSD for inclusion into the City District and the building became Woodland Heights.  Eventually the District sold North, Gettysburg and Washington.  It was a sad day in all those areas because the identity of the area that supplied the students to those buildings was lost.  The District no longer needed these buildings because the number of students in the district had decreased.  Operation costs were significantly lowered.  

Now we are faced with the next step, consolidation of K-8 into one building.  This will eliminate the costly maintenance of the existing buildings as well as the operational costs; this should be a no brainer.  Operation of one modern building with state of the art heating systems, efficient plumbing and lighting will decrease operating costs.  The old buildings will not be a burden, because there is money in the State of Ohio Proposal to abate the property making it a property worth someone’s money to buy.  They can be torn down and the property sold.  Additionally, there is money in the proposal to upgrade existing classrooms at the High School guaranteeing a building that will last into the future.  The length of the bond levy has been extended so that the cost is spread out over a longer period of time making the yearly burden less on the taxpayers.  

These old buildings have so many issues brought about by time, not bad maintenance.  Building practices have changed so much in 100 years.  The open staircase at South is a perfect chimney in the event of a fire.  We know this because fires have occurred in these types of buildings in other towns with devastating consequences.  Being able to contain a building in a crisis means so much today.  None of the existing buildings were built with anything like that in mind to say nothing of the change in the face of the neighborhoods they exist in.  School security is a major concern of school officials as well as law enforcement. 

Whatever happens, every taxpayer in the Greenville School District is getting a bargain!  Those who live in the city get a good deal because with the addition of township, more people are paying the bill and those in the townships are getting a good deal because they are paying less than they would be paying  to support their own neighborhood district.  All of Darke County will benefit because companies want to be in communities with good infrastructure, which includes good schools. 

To those folks who say Good Schools, Police, Fire and EMS don’t make a difference where companies locate, it really does.  This levy and the new school it will pay to erect should have been done twenty years ago.  It wasn’t!  It sure needs to be done now.  This is a WE thing, the GCSD stretches from the Indiana Line almost to Bradford and from Beamsville to south of Wayne Lakes.  YOU all are the WE in this equation.  WE need a new school building.  Some of YOU are mad at the school board for decisions the board made in the past and that’s OK to be upset, but not to the point where it punishes the students of the district, YOUR children.  All of those arguments were legitimate at the time. You can vote the board out at the next election or run for the board yourself.  It seems that all areas of the District should be represented.  

Some don’t like where or how the land for the new school was purchased by the board.  That may have been a legitimate argument at the time but, those folks are long gone.  All of these things may be legitimate, but it changes nothing!  The Greenville City School District needs a new building so that YOUR kids can compete academically with everyone and prepare for the future. There are 25 precincts that vote on GCSD issues.  Eleven are in the City of Greenville, Fourteen are in the Townships.  WE need to support our school district, support for the kids and support for the future.  SUPPORT THE LEVY!