District revamp comes with a catch: vacant schools

By Ed Runyan

WARREN — Perhaps one of the most significant changes to hit the urban landscape in Warren recently has been the construction of five schools to replace 19.

The most obvious change was the construction of the new Warren G. Harding High School on Elm Road Northeast and demolition of most of the old high school.

The old building’s facade was saved and restored and will stand as a monument to the history and architecture of the old high school, said Katherine Hellweg, superintendent. The new high school opened last fall.

The district also built K-8 buildings on Atlantic Street Northeast and Willard Street Southeast and expects construction to be complete on the last two, on Fifth Street Southwest and Tod Avenue Northwest, sometime next year.

The smaller number of schools is partly because of a big drop in enrollment, said Mark Donnelly, the district’s business manager.

In the 1960s, the district had 12,000 students, compared with 5,600 now, Donnelly said. The city’s population has dropped from 65,000 to 45,000.

Meanwhile, the trend in education is for fewer but larger buildings, Donnelly said. Each of the new four K-8 buildings will hold about 1,000 students, whereas most of the district’s older buildings held only 300 to 400.

The move to the five new buildings will leave the district with 14 empty sites all around the city. The district hasn’t decided what to do with the old buildings and land.

“It’s not on the front burner now, with construction of the new buildings taking place,” Donnelly said.

Of the 14, demolitions have left six of them vacant lots. The school board approved demolition of two more Tuesday — a former middle school on South Street near Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital and a former alternative high school on Draper Street next to John F. Kennedy High School.

Three buildings will remain open as schools for one more year until construction is complete on the last two K-8 buildings.

They are the former Western Reserve High School on Loveless Avenue Southwest, which has served as a middle school in recent years, and elementary buildings on Moncrest Drive Northwest and Austin Avenue Southwest.

There are also three buildings “in limbo,” Donnelly said.

Former elementary buildings on Bennett Avenue Northwest, Devon Street Southeast and Loveless Avenue Southwest are being kept for storage for now, Donnelly said.

The district will need some space for nonclassroom uses, Donnelly said.

One proposal is to keep part of the former Western Reserve High School and continue to use it as a professional services center. The district uses space in Reserve for special-education, literacy, food service, technology and warehousing.

City officials have expressed interest in using Reserve, which was built in 1964 and has a swimming pool and planetarium, as a community center.

Hellweg said she would like to see the Reserve building saved, but there are obstacles. The pool is in need of “a lot of repairs,” and the utility bill for the building is around $1 million a year, she said.

If the Reserve building is to be saved, time is running out, officials say.

The school district’s contract with the state says Reserve and the district’s other buildings need to be demolished by around September 2012 or the state will take back the demolition money for the buildings.

Donnelly and Hellweg said the administration and school board have started to discuss options for the old sites.

“During the course of the next year, some decisions will have to be made,” Hellweg said.

One property so far has been of interest to a private developer — the former McKinley school site at the corner of Elm Road and Larchmont Avenue Northeast. The building was razed about three years ago, and the playground was removed.

The American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association has purchased an option on the land and has an interest in building an assisted-living center there.

The loss of playgrounds such as the one at McKinley was mentioned by Al Novak, a Warren City Council member, at a council committee meeting recently.

Novak said he hopes the city can move forward with a new federally funded skateboard park because the school district’s OSFC project is eliminating so many school playgrounds in the city.

Jim Kirk, 64, who has lived in the same house on Hollywood Street Northeast next to the former McKinley Elementary School for 59 years, agrees.

“I miss the school,” Kirk said, adding that McKinley’s old playground was a big asset.

“I grew up playing on it. Kids got together, man, and we did everything. We used to have football games on the front yard, fly kites.”

Kirk said he notices that kids today seem more focused on talking and texting on cell phones than playing outdoors, but he wonders if the community would be better off if kids had more playgrounds.

Kirk’s next-door neighbors, Tony and Monica Brant, who have daughters age 15 and 4, said the neighborhood still has a lot of kids, and some still play at the school, but the baseball field at the back of the property is slowly falling apart, apparently because of vandalism and neglect.

Marsha Crawford, 59, who has lived most of her life on Glenwood Street, one road over from Hollywood, said McKinley school was her school, her playground and a place for indoor summer activities.

“In the summer, there would be programs and projects. We lived for going over to the school, like scavenger hunts and stuff. They [kids] don’t have anything now.”

runyan@vindy.com