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Boardman Local Schools look to the future
BOARDMAN
School district officials are looking to the future, with plans to continue in the fall discussions with community members about their vision.
“This is visioning. This is Boardman looking at where we’re at now and where we want to be,” said schools Superintendent Frank Lazzeri. School officials say no decisions have been made; the strategic-planning process is in the early stages.
That process moved forward after the district wrapped up a three-day community workshop last week.
It all began, however, about two years ago when the district was invited to apply for a state program that helps districts with buildings most in need of replacement.
A state commission determined that out of multiple districts that qualified for the program, Center Middle School on Market Street was most in need of replacement.
“I thought, very naively, that they were going to give us a big pot of money to replace the building,” Lazzeri said. The school district still would have been responsible for 83 percent of the cost.
“We said, ‘We don’t have that kind of money,’” he said.
That led district officials to take a look at the needs of the entire district, Lazzeri said. The district then entered a state program that allows school districts to move forward with projects at a quicker pace. Last summer, the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission evaluated the district’s seven school buildings.
That report, which includes a projection that enrollment will remain flat over the next several years, led school officials to begin two courses of action: lobbying the state with the help of local elected officials to change the formula that determines the amount of state funding districts receive for building new facilities, and engaging with the community, Lazzeri said.
That is what the community workshop that ended Friday, in which township officials, business leaders, teachers, Parent-Teacher Association members and others participated, aimed to do.
The findings of the workshop, summarized in a report, will be available to district officials in about a month.
From there, officials will continue to engage with the community. Any decisions that could be made would not necessarily be limited to building issues, although that’s one thing that could be considered, Lazzeri said.
One thing, however, became clear after the workshop, he said: “People believe that in the future we’re going to have to provide education that features more collaboration with businesses in the community.”
Making decisions about what education will look like at Boardman schools takes time, and input from all stakeholders, Lazzeri said.
“We’re not a district that makes snap judgments or top-down decisions,” he said.