Calling all Frank Ohl alumni: Take last look at school May 10

Calling all Frank Ohl alumni: Take last look at school May 10

Staff report

AUSTINTOWN

The Austintown community is saying goodbye to another of its historic school buildings, as the Frank Ohl Intermediate School hallways empty for the last school year.

On May 10 from 6 to 8 p.m., current fourth and fifth grade students, alumni and staff will observe a farewell ceremony for the school that opened in 1961.

“I’ve only been here for five years, but there’s so much history in this place,” said current principal Bethany Batdorff.

When Frank Ohl school opened it was a junior high, with seventh and eighth grades. In 1968, when a new high school opened, the building became a middle school housing fifth- through eighth-grade students. When the new Austintown Middle School opened several years ago, it became an intermediate school for fourth and fifth grades.

At its opening in 1961, it had a total enrollment of 1,300 students under the administration of Principal A. Glenn Snell, according to documents from the Austintown Historical Society.

“I remember the choir concerts, the band concerts, and I would play along with the choir,” said Denny Rice, now principal at Woodside Elementary, which also will close at the end of this school year.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and Vindy.com.