Sheridan school put on list for closings

Kirkmere, Wiliamson and Southside Upper schools will get the kids.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Pupils enrolled in the Cleveland and Sheridan elementary schools this year will be sent to other buildings in the fall.
Both Cleveland and Sheridan will close with the end of the current school year as part of the city schools' $202 million building replacement/renovation program.
It was part of the plan to close Cleveland from the beginning, but Sheridan was initially targeted as a school that would be rebuilt.
Tony DeNiro, assistant superintendent of school business affairs, said Youngstown lost the Sheridan project when the Ohio School Facilities Commission, which is picking up 80 percent of the overall program cost, reassessed the program needs in 2003.
The state agency decided at that time that declining enrollments made the Sheridan building unnecessary.
Here's the plan
Beginning in the fall, children in kindergarten through the fourth grade who would have attended Cleveland will go to Kirkmere Elementary, DeNiro told the board of education this week.
Pupils who would be in grades five and six at Cleveland will go to Southside Upper Elementary, while children moving on to the seventh grade will go to either Alpha or Athena, the district's gender schools of excellence for boys and girls.
For children in kindergarten through the fourth grade who would have attended Sheridan will go to Williamson Elementary in the fall, and fifth- and sixth-graders will go to Southside Upper Elementary.
Those moving on to seventh grade from both Cleveland and Sheridan will go to either Alpha or Athena.
DeNiro said both Alpha and Athena, which now house only seventh- and eighth-graders, will be expanded to include ninth-graders in the fall.
Meanwhile, the rebuilding program goes on.
The district has already opened new Harding, Taft, West and Williamson elementary schools and the Kirkmere renovation/addition will open this fall, as will the new P. Ross Berry Elementary School, DeNiro said.
Upper grades
A new East High School and the Chaney High School renovation/addition are to be completed in fall 2007. New Bunn and North elementary schools are to open in fall 2008.
A new Volney Rogers Junior High School is also expected to open in fall 2008, although that timetable could be changed.
Renovations at the Choffin Career & amp; Technical Center are to be completed by fall 2009, DeNiro said.
Rayen and Wilson high schools will close in June 2007, and the district will then have only two high schools (in addition to the programs at Choffin).
Rayen and Wilson are slated to be replaced with new middle schools that had been expected to open in fall 2009.
However, a new OSFC reassessment of the building program has resulted in some building size changes and a redesign of the new Rayen and Wilson structures. A new opening date hasn't been established.
gwin@vindy.com