042511 School district maps out timeline on facilities decisions
By Sharon Haught
April 19, 2011
265
Summary: The Wooster City School District has mapped out a timeline to make decisions on the future use of its buildings.
As the Wooster City School District faces into the potential loss of millions of dollars in state funding from the accelerated phase out of the tangible personal property tax reimbursement alone, one thing is certain.
According to Superintendent Michael Tefs, even though 80 percent of the districts budget is consumed by salary and benefit costs were not going to be able to fill budgets over a nine year period of losing $700,000 a year with faculty and staff forever.
Armed with that knowledge the Board of Education directed Director of Business and Community Affairs Dave Kocevar to study the districts enrollment history and prepare a preliminary analysis of how to maximize the use of its buildings.
The results of the study showed that the districts enrollment, which has declined by 17 percent since 1997, coupled with excess capacity in three of its buildings – namely Cornerstone Elementary School, Edgewood Middle School and Wooster High School – may present some cost saving opportunities for the district.
The question then becomes whether the community wants to pursue them.
What we know is that we have some opportunities with our facilities. What we do with those opportunities will be up to a lot of people like you, Tefs said at his most recent coffee and conversation event.
After a panel of facilities experts completes a comprehensive building-by-building review of each of the districts educational buildings, which is expected to be presented to the board at its May meeting, the district will intensify its efforts to seek feedback from the community on the facility decisions that likely lie ahead.
According to Tefs, district officials plan to use the summer months when school families are away for vacation to formulate a series of viable facility scenarios and put together a communication plan for obtaining community input.
Community feedback sessions, which are expected to be in the form of schoolhouse gatherings and focus groups, will likely get underway in September.
According to Tefs in order to implement facilities decisions for the 2012-2013 school year, final decisions on facilities would need to be made by December of 2011 in order to implement the decisions before school resumes in the fall.
In the mean time community members have the opportunity to see the information that has already been presented to the board and information that will be gleaned from the more extensive facilities study now underway by logging on to the districts web site at www.woostercityschools.org and clicking on the Facility Optimization link.
Tefs also invited the community to e-mail questions and feedback on the plan to info@woostercityschools.org.
According to Tefs input from the community will be critical to determining the way forward.
Were facing some serious financial issues. Its going to take the entire community to figure out what we are going to do to continue to deliver educational programming under the budget that we have, Tefs said.
At this point the district has made no decisions on the fate of its facilities, including the Board of Education Building downtown and the Armory Building on Portage Road, the sale of both of which are on the table.
We have no preconceived thoughts on where that might go, said Tefs.
If the community thinks that we can keep the facilities the way we have them today we probably could. It just will be through a locally funded initiative, said Tefs.
Were not going to have revenue from the state or federal government to support us running our buildings the way we are now. Were just going to have to know that local folks are going to have to pick that up, added Tefs.
