Board votes to take bids on furnishings for 2 schools

By Harold Gwin

One board member suggested the district re-evaluate the need for Wilson and Rayen middle schools.

YOUNGSTOWN — They don’t have state approval yet to build the building, but city school officials are ready to buy — or at least take bids on — furniture for the proposed Wilson Middle School.

The school board voted Tuesday to authorize bidding for furniture, fixtures and equipment for both Wilson and Volney Rogers Middle School. The latter is already under construction.

The district has been sitting on bids for the Wilson construction on Gibson Street for a month but has been unable to award the contracts.

The Ohio School Facilities Commission, which would pick up about 80 percent of the tab, has yet to sign off on the project, said Tony DeNiro, assistant superintendent of school business affairs.

It’s an issue that should be resolved soon, DeNiro told board members during a finance committee meeting preceding the school board session. OSFC representatives were to be in Youngstown today to meet with school officials on the matter, he said.

DeNiro said the state agency never formally approved a 2006 revision to the district’s $190 million school rebuilding program, although it was the OSFC that insisted in that revision that the size of five of the 14 buildings in the program be reduced because of declining school enrollments.

Wilson and the proposed Rayen Middle School were two of those five schools. Volney Rogers, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary and Paul C. Bunn Elementary were the other three.

DeNiro said the district has been proceeding on that 2006 revision.

Final design on the Rayen project has been held up as the district and the OSFC determine whether it should be a stand-alone building on Benita Avenue as originally planned or constructed as an addition to Harding Elementary School on nearby Cordova Avenue.

School board member Lock P. Beachum Sr. asked why the district is buying furniture for Wilson when the building has yet to be approved by the state agency.

DeNiro said that bidding Wilson and Volney Rogers jointly could bring a better price for the district. The bids are structured so they can be separated and the Wilson bid could be rejected, if necessary, he said.

Beachum suggested that the district look very carefully at enrollment numbers to determine if the Wilson and Rayen schools are still needed.

Youngstown has been steadily losing pupils to charter schools and other educational facilities, he said, noting that there are some 3,000 Youngstown children in that category.

The board needs to see the official pupil enrollment count gathered last week to help make a decision on the fate of Wilson and Rayen, he said.

Dr. Wendy Webb, superintendent, said later that those figures should be available next week, but it appears the pupil population has fallen by about 300. The district had 7,700 enrolled at this time last year.

gwin@vindy.com