Weathersfield receives grant for work on schools

By Mary Smith

The old middle school gym and cafeteria will be preserved.

MINERAL RIDGE — Weathersfield schools have been awarded a $17.6 million Classroom Facilities Assistance Program Grant from the Ohio School Facilities Commission to add onto Seaborn Elementary School and raze most of the old middle school.

The state will pay for 60 percent of the project, or $10,611,091.

The district will have to come up with a 40 percent share, totaling $7,074,061, which will be put to the voters in the form of a bond issue in the May primary in 2009, schools Superintendent Michael Hanshaw said.

The superintendent received confirmation of the commission’s action Thursday afternoon.

The classrooms at the middle school on state Route 46 will be razed, but the building’s gymnasium and cafeteria will remain. The bus garages also will remain intact to house the district’s fleet.

The gymnasium and cafeteria are to be used as a community center, and talks are already under way with township trustees and community groups to find funding to maintain the center.

The Mineral Ridge Beautification Committee is seeking a grant to put up a gazebo and a walkway with landscaping in the front of the building.

The middle school was constructed in three different sections, the front, first, in 1926, the middle in 1938 and finally, the rear, which includes the bus garages, in 1959.

Seaborn Elementary School on Niles Carver Road will be added onto to house kindergarten through eighth-grade pupils, which will take care of the 301 middle school pupils in fifth through eighth grades who now attend the middle school.

There are currently 360 pupils at Seaborn in kindergarten through fourth grades.

Administrative offices will be put in the Seaborn addition, Hanshaw said, noting he was speaking from his office with mold on the walls and a leaking ceiling in the middle school.

The elementary school was constructed in two phases. The main portion of classrooms and the cafeteria/all-purpose room were built in 1959. An addition in 2002 included a library, several classrooms, music rooms, an art room and an elementary gym. The current total square footage of the building is 54,272.

The 1959 portion of classrooms will be torn down and a new addition is planned to make the building a K-8 complex.

The new facility will include classrooms, a regulation-size gymnasium, and a cafeterium — a cafeteria with a stage in it.

Hanshaw said he will set up a committee to go over the plans and how to market the bond issue to the community. He also will be talking to parents at all three schools after the holidays, and several community meetings will be set.

He said the district has one year to pass a bond levy, and then one year to decide with architects the details of the building project.

MS Consultants Inc. of Youngstown worked with the district on preparation of plans.

The project now will be submitted to the State Controlling Board on Dec. 15 for approval and certification of funds.