Meeting to focus on saving Davis school

A school board member said it is too early for a decision on whether to close a building.

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

AUSTINTOWN — A member of the Parent Teacher Association at Davis Elementary has called a meeting of school parents to discuss the proposed building’s closing at the end of this school year.

Kathleen Bache said she has read the evaluations done by the Ohio School Facilities Commission last fall and a performance audit done by the Ohio auditor’s office last spring and wonders what part of those reports points to the need to close Davis.

“There is absolutely no mention [by the Ohio auditor] of closing the school,” Bache said.

Bache is the mother of two current Davis Elementary pupils and has a third child in preschool. Davis Elementary, built in 1954 and 1956, houses children from kindergarten through third grade and is located on Maple Avenue in the northeast part of the township.

The Davis Elementary meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the cafeteria/all purpose room in the school.

An analysis of the condition of all of the district’s buildings by the school facilities commission rates Davis Elementary as the second-best of the five in the district, she said.

“If they’re closing a school, I think they’re closing the wrong one,” she added.

Davis Elementary is a “really special school,” she said, adding, “I can’t imagine that school closing.”

Superintendent Doug Heuer said it is true that the Ohio auditor’s report didn’t say the district should close a building. But that is not the auditor’s role, he said.

Instead, the auditor provides the data and leaves the decision-making up to the local administration and school board.

As for the condition of the buildings, the district has primarily relied on a report provided by R.G. Carbone Construction Management for guidance on which building would be best to close, Heuer said.

In a letter to school board members last week, Heuer cited an April 2007 performance audit from the state auditor showing that the district’s five elementaries were only between 52 percent and 59 percent full, based on an average pupil-classroom ratio of 25.

Austintown’s elementary schools maintain a ratio of about 20 or 21 pupils per classroom, Heuer said.

Heuer said the district’s elementary schools are not full because the district’s enrollment has dropped from 8,000 in the early 1980s to 5,000 today. The superintendent said the state advises districts to shoot for a minimum of 350 pupils per building for efficiency reasons.

The current elementary buildings average 283 pupils per building, with Davis having 203.

If the board chooses to close an elementary, it ought to be Davis, Heuer said, because it has the smallest enrollment and will need a $350,000 to $400,000 roof within two years.

School board member Traci Morse Merlo said discussions about possible closing of an elementary began in early February, but it is too early for her to give an opinion on whether a building should be eliminated or which building it should be.

Other board members did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

runyan@vindy.com