AFTER FIRE, TIGHTER QUARTERS

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

PACE IS TIGHT AT THE
Mahoning County Career and Technical Center in Canfield, but school reopened smoothly Tuesday after a devastating fire last spring, Superintendent Roan Craig said.

The May 4 fire began in a multimedia lab and ruined the northwest wing of the tech center’s main building on Palmyra Road. Now, the school is working with 38,000 less square feet, Craig said. The center includes one other building.

The school had 220,000 square feet to begin with. “One hundred-eighty thousand is still a great number,” she said. But, she acknowledged, space is maxed out.

“We’ve used every inch of space, but we fit everyone in and don’t need portable classrooms.”

Space makers

Craig said the space will be reclaimed, either through rebuilding in the area that’s there, or in knocking down the walls and building a new wing. The school has plans to build a new addition anyway, she said, and it’s possible that addition could extend from the rebuilt wing into what’s now part of the parking lot in front of the main building.

It’s the school’s insurance company, she said, that will decide whether it’s better economically to rebuild the wing or build a new one.

She said that the school hopes to solicit bids for the construction work in early spring.

For now, she said, teachers who had two spaces in which to teach — classrooms and labs — have consolidated and are teaching their classes in the labs.

Craig said the latest damage estimate, including extensive smoke damage in the parts of the building that weren’t damaged by fire, is about $8 million.

Efforts of many

Cleaning and painting there, including painstaking work on textbooks and documents that were salvaged, went on throughout the summer. Belfor Property Restoration did that work.

Teachers, administrators, custodians and secretaries all worked hard to get ready for opening day, Craig said.

She said buses were on time, and students got to their classes quickly.

After the fire, students finished last year at the Gordon D. James Career and Technical Center in Lordstown. That school, which was closed, belongs to the Lordstown School District.

May 4 fire

The fire began the afternoon of May 4 when a bucket of solvent students were using to clean up spilled paint caught fire. A student threw the blazing bucket into a sink, but the solvent splashed onto the counter and wall and the flames spread.

Witnesses said they didn’t know how the fire started. State fire marshal investigators determined after a two-month investigation that the flame from a cigarette lighter ignited the solvent.

Two students, who graduated in the spring, are charged in the fire. They are Pamela Schindler, 17, of Salem, and Kyle Layne, 19, of Alliance. Schindler was charged in July with criminal damaging. Her case is pending in Mahoning County Juvenile Court. Canfield police reported that another student saw her light a lighter, then the bucket caught fire.

Layne was charged in July with obstruction of official business. Canfield police said he did not provide accurate information during the fire investigation. His case is set for a pretrial hearing Sept. 21 in County Court in Canfield.