Many go to ceremony for new K-8 building The first of four new schools is to be ready to go by fall 2007.

By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- School officials launched their $153 million construction project with a ceremonial groundbreaking Monday morning for the first of five new buildings.
The ceremony took place behind Lincoln Elementary School on Atlantic Street Northeast, where the first of four new $17.7 million kindergarten-through-eighth-grade buildings will be constructed beginning next spring.
The board of education passed a resolution last month to seek bids for construction of the new building on the Lincoln site, which consists of 20 acres of board-owned land.
Bids will soon be accepted, and Frank Caputo, district construction project manager, said he hopes site preparation can begin in December, with the new building scheduled to open in fall 2007.
Attending the brief ceremony were members of the school board and administration, city officials, parents and Lincoln pupils. Participants and spectators gathered under a tent and umbrellas in a steady rain. Besides using ceremonial shovels, participants released black and yellow helium-filled balloons into the sky.
"Breaking ground this morning is certainly bringing a smile to all of our faces, and it's certainly, I believe, a long awaited event," said Kathryn Hellweg, superintendent. "This is a great day, and there are greater things to come," she added.
"Even though it's raining, today is a monumental day in the city of Warren," said school board President Linda H. Metzendorf. "We are going to have one of the most phenomenal school systems in the state of Ohio when this project is finished."
Locations of other facilities
Other planned new K-8 buildings will be adjacent to the vacant Willard School on Willard Avenue Southeast, on Parkman Road Northwest next to Trumbull Plaza and at an undetermined site in the city's southwest quadrant.
Also included in the project will be a new $40.1 million Warren G. Harding High School adjacent to the existing high school bearing that name.
The five buildings will replace all 13 city schools by mid-2009.
Eighty-one percent of the project's funding comes from the state and the remainder from a local bond issue voters approved in November 2003. After the new buildings open, the state will pay for demolition of the existing buildings.
Hellweg noted that the district is still using Laird Avenue Elementary School, built in 1915, and its newest building is Western Reserve Middle School, completed in 1966.
milliken@vindy.com