Group offers school upgrade plans

5 options for Rossford cost up to $77M

John Appt, chairman of the Master Plan Steering Committee, presents the five options for renovating or replacing Rossford’s school buildings during a forum Wednesday at the high school auditorium.

Locating all students on a single, new campus is one of five options a Rossford resident group has put forward for upgrading the school district’s aged and outdated buildings. The plans range in cost from $70 million to $77 million and were released last week at a community forum that drew about 50 people to the high school auditorium.

Two more forums are scheduled for this week — 6 to 7:30 p.m. today and Thursday at the Rossford Public Library.

The single-campus option has a price tag of $72 million and would house all of Rossford’s 2,100 students at a new complex on the site of Glenwood Elementary School at Glenwood Road and State Rt. 795, said John Appt, chairman of the Master Plan Steering Committee.

The advantages to this choice, called Option 2, were the consolidation of space, proximity to athletic fields, and minimal disruption to classes during construction, he said. The biggest disadvantage would be the loss of neighborhood schools, Mr. Appt said.

The other possibilities he outlined were:

● Option 1 — Improve the high school and junior high, called “Downtown” because of their location, through renovations and new construction, and renovate Eagle Point, Glenwood, and Indian Hills elementaries. The projected cost is $70.4 million. The advantage here is that the community perception of the schools would be preserved. Disadvantages include longer construction time, major disruptions to classes during construction, and higher operational expenses afterward.

● Option 3 — Improve Downtown with renovations and new construction and build new Eagle Point and Indian Hills elementaries. Glenwood Elementary would be eliminated. The projected cost is $76 million. This option would maintain the campus downtown and achieve great energy efficiency with the new buildings, but it would require a lot of student relocations during construction.

● Option 4 — Consolidate prekindergarten through fifth grades in a new building at Indian Hills. Grades six through 12 would be Downtown in renovated/new facilities. The cost is $75 million. This option also would preserve the Downtown campus and save the Glenwood site for future use, but it would entail disposing of Eagle Point.

● Option 5 — Improve Downtown and Eagle Point with renovations and new construction, and build a new Indian Hills. Eagle Point would house all prekindergarten and kindergarten students, while Indian Hills would be for grades one through five. This would cost $77 million. It would achieve energy efficiency and preserve Downtown.

Erin Crawford, a mother with two children at Indian Hills, said she liked Option 4 the most. “Anything except Options 1 and 2 is OK,” she said. “Two is a central campus, which is not a neighborhood school for anyone.”

Financing would be done through a property tax or combination of property and income taxes that voters would have to approve.