School board thanks those who helped build new parking lot

By Mary Smith

A McDonald senior has earned a perfect score on the ACT college entrance exam.

McDONALD — The board of education offered its thanks to three local companies and the village for their donation of money and construction work to build a 75-spot parking lot next to Roosevelt Elementary School on Seventh Street.

The parking lot was the idea the board had come up with to alleviate continuing congestion at Roosevelt when parents were picking up or dropping off their children.

Principal Anthony Russo said the new parking lot has helped ease the problems. He said he finds a large number of people are using the parking lot to leave the school grounds.

The board also changed traffic patterns this year in conjunction with Police Chief Lou Ronghi to alleviate the congestion, but, as board president Robert Jones Jr. said at Monday’s board meeting, more work was needed.

“We were about to go into debt to solve this problem,” Jones said.

Estimates for the parking lot cost was expected to be between $8,000 and $12,000 for a concrete lot.

Lafarge North America, with several locations in the area, including McDonald, donated $6,750 in aggregate for the parking lot. B&B Construction, Salt Springs Road, donated excavation equipment, and McDonald Village and Wolford’s Refuse and Recycling here donated equipment and labor.

In other matters, the board recognized the achievement of 17-year-old high school senior Adam Tura, son of Frank and Kellie Strange, Dakota Avenue, for scoring a perfect 36 score on the American College Test.

Adam is a 4.0 student at McDonald, a member of the football and bowling teams and National Honor Society, and is taking two classes at Youngstown State University.

He plans to major in molecular genetics and has his sights set on attending Ohio State University upon graduation, his parents said. The ACT Web site said that of the 1.4 million 2008 seniors who took the test, 1 in 3,300 got a perfect score. The national average composite score is 21.1.

Board officials said they cannot recall when, if ever, a student scored a perfect score on the college entrance exam at McDonald.