Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Investigators still have not announced the cause of the fire.
By JEANNE STARMACK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
LORDSTOWN -- A sense of loss.
Senior Amber Arditi was feeling it Tuesday, because of changes since a May 4 fire at the Mahoning County Career and Technical Center that have disrupted the rest of her school year.
Monday was the first day of classes since the fire at the tech center on Palmyra Road near Canfield.
That blaze caused millions of dollars in damage and closed the main building for the rest of the year. Investigators are still working to determine why a bucket of solvent in an art room caught fire, which spread after the flaming bucket was thrown into a sink.
School personnel worked to find a place for 600 students to finish the school year. The Gordon D. James Career Center, which has been vacant since 2001, fills the bill as best it can.
"We have so many kids," Arditi said, "and not our resources, and not enough room, and all our stuff was lost."
"And it's so close to graduation," said Targo Parind, a senior from Greenford.
Graduation is scheduled for June 6 at a location to be announced, but some students are going to have to come back afterward to finish their requirements.
Not every loss was earth-shattering: Parind and senior Rikki Stape of Berlin Center laughed when they talked about having to miss the Penguin Regatta at Youngstown State University.
The regatta, which features high-schoolers in cardboard boats in the pool at Beeghly Center, was Tuesday. They were making their boats when the fire broke out.
"Our boats got ruined," Stape said.
One loss in particular, however, was very hard to take.
Arditi was a friend of senior Bradley Feezle, 18, of Petersburg, who died May 11 when he fell off the tailgate of a pickup truck in Little Beaver Township, Pa.
"It's really sad coming back here without him," she said. "We were in every class together."
Parind, who is in the biotechnology program and intends to be a pharmacist, said it was hard getting around to find classes.
But he and Arditi said they were impressed with the organization. "I thought it would be chaos," Arditi said.
"It gets a little crazy, like the first day of school," said John Zehentbauer, MCCTC director. "But teachers are very well prepared and there's been good community response from Lordstown."
The Gordon D. James center belongs to the Lordstown school district. The center closed after the Niles school district pulled out of the group of districts that formed the vocational school.
Bill Pfahler, Lordstown superintendent, said the district is renting the building, though the amount of rent hasn't yet been specified.
Lordstown is providing extra security and garbage pickup, but the MCCTC brought its own cafeteria and custodial staff.
Pfahler said allowing the use of the center was just "the right thing to do" for a neighboring school district.