Niles board backs plan for 2 schools

By Jordan Cohen

Plans call for construction of the high school and one elementary to be completed in 2012.

NILES — The board of education went along with the recommendations of its construction manager and voted Thursday to build two elementary schools on the sites of Bonham and Lincoln schools.

The board also selected one of five building options for the new high school that will be constructed on the same acreage as McKinley High, off Dragon Drive.

The vote followed a community meeting attended by nearly 60 people during which Robert McAuliffe, construction project manager, recommended Bonham and Lincoln because their property size meets the 10-acre minimum requirement of the Ohio School Facilities Commission, and the district would not have to spend additional funds for property purchases.

“They’re buildable without extraordinary measures,” McAuliffe said.

Of the other elementary sites, he said, Jackson is too small at 5.3 acres, and Washington requires extensive additional costs because of its 35-foot vertical grade.

The decision was not unanimous; Vice President Susan Giannetti Longacre cast the only opposing vote.

“We asked the public to vote on their preferences in our first community meeting, but we did not ask them to vote tonight,” Longacre said. “We should have asked them to decide, and I voted no because we didn’t.”

Longacre said, however, that she did not disagree with the recommendations.

Plans call for construction of the high school and one of the elementary schools to begin in 2010, with completion slated for 2012. Construction of the second school would begin that same year, with completion expected in 2014.

Bonham will house grades three to five, and Lincoln, the smaller of the two, will be limited to kindergarten through second grade. Superintendent Rocco Adduci has recommended that Bonham be constructed first so students do not have to return to the older buildings.

McAuliffe said that during construction, students at Bonham and Lincoln will have modular classrooms or “trailer city,” as he described them at the other school locations. Lincoln, Bonham and Washington are scheduled to be demolished. Jackson’s fate is still undecided.

As for the high school, the board selected the first of five options in which the building will be constructed on the site of the current soccer field. Adduci reassured a questioner that the high school will have a soccer location. The site was chosen because it, too, will save money for the district even though construction will have to be graded to keep the building above the floodplain.

“We have $2 million that we did not have to spend on property, so we can build an auditorium and an auxiliary gymnasium,” Adduci said.

Last November, voters approved an $18 million bond issue to finance the school district’s share of the $60 million cost. The actual local share has since decreased to $16.2 million.