Classrooms Facilities Assistance Program

The second meeting of the Greenville City School’s Classrooms Facilities Assistance Program committee met at Woodland Heights school Tuesday evening.  The meeting was very well attended and began immediately after the regular School Board Meeting. Hopefully the good attendance means that we are headed in the right direction.


Garman/Miller Architects -Engineers of Minster facilitated the meeting.  They have vast experience in the field of building schools and a complete working knowledge of the Ohio Schools Facilities Commission’s Classroom Facilities Assistance Program (CFAP). This program will provide much of the funding for building new classroom space in the Greenville City School District.  There are a number of options on the table and these were brought about by an assessment of all of our schools.  This assessment revealed that only the High School was a candidate for rehabilitation.  This was brought out at the first meeting and committee members have spent much time in the interim taking tours of schools in our district as well as new schools in other districts.  On average, it costs $1.70 per sq. ft. to operate a school building.  The new buildings that were toured can be operated for 70 cents per sq. ft because of energy saving design and new technology in heating and cooling, electrical and appliances.


The school board has a number of building configurations to choose from.  One of the products of the committee’s deliberations is to assist the BOE in making this decision.  By May of 2011, a decision must be made on which Master Plan will be used to guarantee the State’s offer of funding.  If the decision is YES then there will be a one year window to secure a bond issue to fund the school.  The first opportunity for the bond levy will be the November 2011 election.


The next meeting will be held after the April 19th  board meeting where we will look at options and decide which option to go with.


Garaman/Miller used a voting program where all participants at the meeting were able to vote on the various options.  Since most people attending had also taken tours of the districts buildings, the first vote on whether we needed new buildings showed that 95% strongly agreed and 5% somewhat agreed that there was a significant problem.  The Ohio Schools Facility Commission will provide a maximum of $26,312,000 to complete this project.  Greenville’s portion will be $67,237,000.


The next question that needed an answer was did the committee feel that we should move ahead by taking the OSFC offer of $26,000,000 and build to an approved Master Plan.  Meeting attendees voted 100% to take the offer.  This means that at some point the bond levy will be placed on the ballot for all voters in the district to approve.


There are a number of Master Plan options to be considered and these consist of how the voters want the buildings configured such as to build a new K-8 and renovate the high school or renovate the high school for K-8 and build a new high school.  In all there were 8 different options and a lot of discussion.


The next question was probably the hardest and that was whether the committee felt that a bond levy can be passed.  This was the vote of the evening with the widest areas of disagreement.  In all most people felt that it would be good to do the project as a segmented project.  This means that state money would be guaranteed and that we would be able to start the project and complete the whole thing as we can.  It allows us the most flexibility.  As a segmented project we needed to decide which buildings need the most help the soonest.  Unfortunately this is a hard question and the vote on this was widely separated.  The options were K-5, 6-8 or 9-12 with a career technology center.  All of the elementary buildings are in dire need as was evidenced in the tours that we took.  All have significant boiler problems.  Woodland has major leaks in the steam piping which have been patched over and over.  It also has asbestos laden ceiling in all rooms and hallways except the gym.  Additionally it is on well water which must be treated and has it’s own sewage plant.


None of the buildings have fire protection and only a couple are tied into a central station alarm.  South, East and the Jr. High have electrical panels which are no longer in production meaning that if a breaker goes bad, it cannot be replaced.  The list is endless.


What will happen now is that Garmann/Miller will take the information that we gave them and come up with more refinement on the options that we gave them.  This will give more detailed costs and be available for the next meeting.

Good News From Greenville Schools

Tonight, the Greenville City Schools will convene the first meeting a group to help guide further input on the school building situation.  The BOE has published their intention to participate in the Ohio Schools Facilities Commission's Classroom Facilities Assistance Program.  To gather input, they are requesting input from a cross section of the district representing all of the precincts which vote on GCS issues.   This is a definite step in the right direction.  This meeting will be held at the South School.  There will be three other meetings in the following months.

2009-2010 School Report Card

Every October the Ohio Graduation Test is given and soon we will see the results of that test.  In the meantime, here is the 2009-2010  report card for the entire district.  While we have an Effective District, we are still below the average in most areas.  To see the results of the entire district's report card, go HERE  Here is a quick look at the results. Keep in mind that the state requirement is 75%.   Cells in RED are below the state requirements. Numbers in the right column in red are below similiar district average.

Taming the elephant

The installation of Joe Payne as the new GSD board member brings some interesting questions.  First will he be able to tame the pink elephant that is still in the middle of the room.  Second, the board, which is aware of the elephant in the middle of the room, once again shot themselves in the foot by not appointing an applicant from the Gettysburg area who applied for the position.  The board seems to be hesitant to involve themselves with anyone who doesn't fit a particular mold that they have unofficially established.
In the meantime, the Ohio Graduation Test scores loom large over our heads with this years results soon to be published.  Will we once again finish last against all schools in a 25 mile radius?  And what about passing a bond levy?  Maybe a board member from the Gettysburg area would have done just a little to bring those folks on board.  Guess we'll never know about that, will we.
Bottom line is something has to happen.  Hopefully Joe Payne is a sleeper.  Hopefully Joe Payne will be able to ask the hard questions and not let up until he gets an answer. Hopefully Joe Payne has a little hell's fire and brimstone he can throw out during a meeting to get us off of dead center.
Congratulations Joe Payne, you certainly have your work cut out for you.  Let's hope that the Big Pink Elephant in the middle of the room doesn't get any bigger.

The Big Pink Elephant

It appears that there is a big pink elephant in the middle of the room and no one wants to talk about it. Before the last election a lot of people did a lot of campaigning for and against a levy for a new school. I don't know if any of them looked at the real facts.  This blog has unearthed a lot of cold, hard facts.  Numbers usually don't lie, especially when they can be backed up with facts.  In this case the research that I did came from the Board of
Elections and the Ohio Department of Education.
These facts show very plainly that people within the city limits of Greenville pretty much support the schools and with only a couple of exceptions, everyone else whom we've invited into the system in years past doesn't support the schools at all.  It's right there in black and white.  No one has said a word about it.
A comparison of Greenville Schools Sophomore classes taking the Ohio Graduation Test with schools within 25 miles of Greenville shows that we consistently come in behind everyone else.  Those figures weren't made up, they're the State of Ohio figures, not just last year but for the last 4 years.
Well as this elephant gets bigger, you got to wonder if all those people outside Greenville knew this and not voting was there way of complaining about low test scores and the people in the city just didn't care or what.  More than likely nobody ever looked at the stats before.  The counter on this blog was reset at 500 hits and it now has over 700 so it's pretty obvious that at least 700 people know what the statistics are now and yet the elephant still stands there. No one has said a word
It's sort of embarrassing that the levy went down as many times as it has.  It's even more embarrassing that our kids are graduating and the figures show that they only comprehend about 75% of what they were taught.  Why is that? In 20 years those same kids will be wondering where all the elephants came from!

Four year comparison of the State Proficiency test

This chart is a comparison of four years of Proficiency test results.  Please note in each area of study what the state average is.

In Math the state average is 81%, in Greenville it is 77%, 16 points below average.

In Writing the state average is 90%, in Greenville it is 83%, 7% below average.

In Science the state average is 76%, in Greenville it is 68%, 8% below average.

In Social Studies the state average is 82%, in Greenville it is 74%, 8% below average.

In Reading  the state average is 85%, in Greenville it is 72%,13% below average.

These figures tell us that our kids can't read, although they can write which is sort of odd%.  While 76% of the kids statewide understand science and what makes the world go around, our kids haven't a clue at 68% and so on. Wonder if a new school would fix this?