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Nonprofit organization helps South Range schools thrive
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Fifth-graders Harley Novak, left, and Jillian Strecansky of South Range Middle School work on iPads during class. They use the devices to work on a math program that walks them through a tutorial to show them how to fix a problem they got wrong.
By ROBERT CONNELLY
NORTH LIMA
A nonprofit organization has been helping the South Range School District supplement capital expenses since 1982 to ease costs, including classroom and building updates.
Steve Rohan, principal at South Range High School, said the South Range Schools Foundation awarded between $65,000 and $70,000 last school year. He added it was $50,000 this year.
“Each one of our buildings got $10,000 when our teachers were requesting things,” Rohan said.
The foundation has existed since 1982 and, through fundraisers and trusts or endowments, pays for building upgrades or gives grants to teachers who request them.
Superintendent Dennis Dunham said the old auditorium at the school in North Lima as well as the weight room and equipment have benefited from recent purchases.
Sandy Toy, director of development and alumni relations with the district, said the district has used donations over the years, but also has been receiving help through a family trust, the Rominger Trust, which Dunham called a major factor in recent years.
“We’ve over the last three years seen about $100,000 annually from the Rominger Trust fund” to the foundation, she said.
Dunham explained that there is a chairman for the Rominger family who works with school officials on what to fund. He also said Phil and Jerry Rominger were residents of the North Lima area and neither was a graduate of South Range schools.
Rohan said of the Rominger Trust: “That doesn’t happen very often ... our community and school district — we are in debt to that family.”
The trust, along with donations, have helped the foundation continue to pay for new things for the district, including a new iPad cart last year.
The district is in the second year of a three-year lease for 200 of the handheld tablets and, at the end of next year, will buy each from Apple for $1.
Technology upgrades for the district have coincided with the state shifting away from pencil-and-paper tests. The foundation paid for a 30-desktop computer lab for the middle school last year, and another 30-desktop computer is being planned for the high school.
Rohan said if the foundation was not here to help pay for capital investments, such as the iPad cart, “We wouldn’t get it. It wouldn’t be hard — it would be impossible.”
Krista Hosler’s fifth-grade math class at the middle school is using iPads to learn. She said if a student gets an equation wrong, there is a tutorial explaining to them how they got the answer wrong.
“We love technology. It allows us to do so much more with them,” Hosler said. “They can work at their own pace.”
A resource center for grades two through four at the elementary school is run by Tracy Martz and Sherri Shehan. They requested and received new folders with different types of games, such as puzzles in them, that are Common Core State Standards approved.
Common Core establishes standards that are the same for everyone to prepare students for their next level of schooling or to go into the workforce.
Many children from different grades were in the resource room, and Martz said of the new items: “If you don’t change it up and get new things, they get bored.”