Plans for new school take shape at meeting

Some residents are worried about separating older and younger pupils.
By SEAN BARRON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
NORTH JACKSON -- Plans to build a new middle school-high school probably started to come into sharper focus for those who attended a special Jackson-Milton school board meeting set up to address the subject.
About 25 people came to the session Monday at Jackson-Milton Elementary School on Mahoning Avenue to hear a presentation by Architectural Vision Group Ltd. of Cleveland outlining the steps and preliminary timeline for construction of the school, estimated to cost about $13.5 million. The board hired the firm to oversee the design phases for the school; school officials also hired Ruhlin Construction Inc. of Canton to supervise the construction.
For several years, many residents in the area have pushed for a school to replace Jackson-Milton High School, which was built in 1913 and has experienced several costly structural problems. The new facility will be designed for those in grades seven through 12 and is to go up on more than 100 acres the district owns between Mahoning Avenue and Interstate 76.
Design phases
Syed Abbas, AVG's president, explained that a series of design phases will have to be approved before construction of the 73,000-square-foot school gets under way, which could occur in August 2007. The design process will take into account feedback from school personnel and the community.
Part of the process will be site and schematic designs, estimated to take about seven months altogether, Abbas continued. After that, a design development phase will kick in, which will include input from the community and a review, Abbas noted.
Abbas emphasized that the timeline is flexible. He noted that the design process will rely heavily on residents' input.
Construction of the school, which will house about 450 pupils, should take 15 to 16 months and wrap up around December 2008, he estimated.
A few people expressed concerns about how the younger pupils will be separated from the older kids. They were told that the school will have demarcations to separate the seventh- and eighth-graders from the high school students, but that there will be common areas for both.
Stadium discussed
Also discussed was building a $2.5 million stadium near the school that would be used for track meets as well as football and soccer games. Money for the 1,500-seat stadium would come from passage of a 1-mill $2.7 million bond issue on the Nov. 7 general election ballot, Superintendent Buck Palmer noted.
Palmer said that Ohio School Facilities Commission money is slated to pay about $4 million of the $23 million school construction project. The district also has roughly $10 million set aside that would be used to renovate or replace the elementary school, Palmer said.