Lack of funds prevents razing of some empty Youngstown schoolsSFlb

By Harold Gwin

The former Jackson and West schools are next on the list to be demolished.

YOUNGSTOWN — There are 11 vacant or soon-to-be vacant school buildings scattered across the city.

School officials say they have funds to raze four of them, and, although they’d like to take most of the others down, there’s just no money to do it at this time. Slated for sure are the old Jackson school on Windsor Avenue, and the old West school on North Hazelwood Avenue.

It’s not that any building is falling down or generating complaints from residents, said Anthony DeNiro, assistant superintendent for school business affairs.

The district maintains security in all of them as well as keeps the grass cut and exteriors in good shape and several of them are at least partially still occupied, but they have outlived their usefulness as schools, he said.

People who live near the buildings are good neighbors and notify the district if anything seems amiss, DeNiro said, adding that the only complaints he hears are about long grass in the spring.

“They’re keeping it looking fair,” said Arthur Nash, who lives near the Lincoln building on Charlotte Avenue. The district has been maintaining the property, he said.

“The windows and everything are OK,” said Judy Collins, who lives near the Hillman building on West Myrtle Avenue. There haven’t been any problems, although she said she doesn’t like to see the school vacant.

The White building on Lyden Avenue is also kept in good shape, said neighbor Yvonne Welcher. She had no complaints about the vacant structure.

The buildings have no particular importance to the district at this point, although many are used as storage facilities for district material and equipment, DeNiro said.

Youngstown tore down 12 old buildings as part of a $187 million, 13-building school rebuilding program that is nearing completion.

There’s still money from that project to tear down four more, with the state picking up 80 percent of the cost, DeNiro said.

The school board voted recently to raze the old Jackson school, agreeing to pay Delphi Consulting Inc. of Houston, Pa., $73,030 to handle that task.

The bid came in at just half of the $142,000 engineering estimate on the project, DeNiro said.

The old West school will be the next to come down, with the state picking up 80 percent of the expense, he said.

The Ohio School Facilities Commission had also agreed to provide 80 percent of the cost of tearing down the Haddow and Sheridan buildings, on Oak Street and Hudson Avenue, respectively, but the district decided to keep them, DeNiro said.

Haddow is still in good shape and Sheridan is partially leased to the Mahoning Valley High School, a new school for students facing expulsion and/or incarceration for misbehavior in their home districts, he said.

The OSFC agreed to allow the district to reallocate demolition funds from those two buildings to two others to be selected by the school board and superintendent, DeNiro said.

The Princeton building on Hillman Street, the West building on North Hazelwood Avenue and the Hayes building on Ford Avenue are still occupied by city school children, albeit temporarily.

The Alpha: School of Excellence is at Princeton until the new Wilson Middle School is completed in the spring of 2010.

West is currently the home of Volney Rogers Middle School. It will be vacated when the new Volney opens this fall.

Hayes is still a middle school, and pupils there were to go to a new Rayen Middle School that was to be built as part of the rebuilding program. Declining enrollment, however, resulted in the state scrapping the plans for Rayen, and the district is now looking at a proposal to create a Rayen school at the district’s central office building at 20 W. Wood St.

The new school would be called the Rayen Youngstown Early College Middle School, developed as a feeder school to Youngstown Early College High School, according to Superintendent Wendy Webb.

The other five buildings — Lincoln on Charlotte Avenue, Adams on Cooper Street, White on Lyden Avenue, Harrison on Commonwealth Avenue and Hillman on West Myrtle Avenue — are being used only for storage, DeNiro said.

gwin@vindy.com