Rayen building will stay, Youngstown board says

By Harold Gwin

YOUNGSTOWN — The Judge William Rayen Foundation trustees don’t want the city school district to lose the former Rayen School that is now part of the Irene Ward central office complex at Wick Avenue and Wood Street.

The trustees urge the district to preserve his name in some manner, Reid Schmutz, a member of the trustees, told the city school board this week.

Judge Rayen died in 1854, but his estate provided funds for a trust and the founding of The Rayen School where all of Youngstown’s children could be educated. It was built in 1866 and became the first public school in Mahoning County. The attached Ward building was added later.

The school moved to Benita Avenue when a new building was erected there in 1922, but the school district has now torn that down as part of a 14-building school rebuilding program.

The plan was to rebuild Rayen as a middle school, but the state, which is picking up 80 percent of the rebuilding program cost, scrapped that idea due to declining pupil enrollment.

There is some concern that the district might sell the Ward building and move its central offices into space at various schools as it seeks ways to reduce operating costs.

Others besides the trustees urged the school board to keep the former school intact.

Don’t close the building, said Tom Anderson of Canfield Road. Fix up the front in a style similar to the restorations of the historic buildings at Williamsburg, Va., and dedicate it to Judge Rayen and the late P. Ross Berry, a local builder of schools and other noted structures, Anderson said.

The school is a monument that represented a certain standard, said Edna Pincham of Clearmount Drive, a reference to Rayen’s years as a preparatory high school whose diploma once carried such prestige that a graduate could find ready admission to nearly any college of his or her choice.

“It’s important for us to hold onto that legacy,” Pincham told the board, urging that a way be found to hold onto the building.

“The Rayen building isn’t going anywhere,” Anthony Catale, school board president, assured the speakers.

The central offices may be moved, but Superintendent Wendy Webb has proposed that the facility be remodeled and reopened as a preparatory school leading pupils to enroll in Youngstown Early College, he said. The Rayen name would be maintained, he added.

It would be called the Rayen Youngstown Early College Middle School.

The Rayen trustees administer the school trust, which has grown to a principal of $2 million, and have spent $552,000 on various forms of assistance to the Youngstown city high schools over the last eight years, Schmutz said.

Much of that money is in the form of scholarships to graduates who enroll at Youngstown State University, but money also has been provided for everything from band uniforms to computers, guest lecturers and seminars.

The foundation’s generosity hasn’t gone unrecognized by the district.

Catale presented Schmutz and fellow trustees Charles C. Rudibaugh Jr. and C. Gilbert James Jr., who also attended the meeting, with a board resolution of appreciation expressing thanks for the trustees’ long-standing tradition of providing assistance to benefit city school pupils.

The resolution noted the trustees have already given more than $37,000 this school year alone, with $17,878 going for band uniforms at Chaney High School and $8,000 for choir robes, $4,526 for biology lab supplies, $4,938 for laminator paper and $2,000 for the Winterfest program, all at East High School.

gwin@vindy.com