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Legislation would aid schools
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown is proposing legislation that would help modernize public schools including 10 in the Mahoning Valley.
Brown talked Tuesday about his Fix America’s Schools Today in a telephone conference with reporters.
The legislation would provide money to modernize and renovate schools while putting people to work.
“We tell our children there is nothing more important than education and we send our children to school buildings that say something very different,” Brown said.
It’s included in President Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act in which Ohio could receive up to $985.5 million in funding for kindergarten through 12th-grade schools and $259 million for Ohio community colleges.
While about $355 million of the funding for K-12 schools would go to Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo city schools, the state’s largest districts, there would be some available for other districts.
Among the 55 Ohio districts that are in need of significant repairs, according to Brown’s office, are Beaver Local and United Local in Columbiana County, Springfield in Mahoning County and Weathersfield in Trumbull County. Those districts qualified for school-construction projects but were unable to provide the local share, Brown’s office said.
Austintown and Western Reserve school districts in Mahoning and Brookfield, Hubbard, Niles and Southington schools in Trumbull have school construction projects under way.