This shows the third option, which includes attaching a new 6-12 building to the elementary school.
PEMBERVILLE – The vision residents want for their students and for their school district was the topic at a recent Eastwood Schools facility committee meeting.
An estimated 40 pp attended the session, held Sept. 25.
What is the vision for the future education at Eastwood and can the facilities support that, asked Emmy Beeson, a former superintendent and current consultant hired by the district to lead staff and the community through the visioning of the project.
Jennifer Fuller, a project executive with Fanning Howey, said master planning in the district included what the building conditions were like and are they fostering a good education for students, are they underutilized or overutilized and do they assist with curriculum delivery.
Beeson said she met with administrators and teacher leaders in May and June and plans to set up student focus groups to learn what kind of instruction is meaningful to them.
“What are your nonnegotiables, what are the things that are most important to this district,” she said was asked of attendees.
“How people spend their time is how we design,” she said.
Eastwood has been looking at its options for replacing its middle school and high school.
Earlier this year, the board voted to work with the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission to evaluate current facilities and to explore options for renovating or replacing the existing middle school and high school. OFCC won’t pay for renovations of the two buildings based on its assessments.
The high school opened in 1960. An addition and remodeling project which included a third wing was completed in 2001. The middle school opened in 1970. The elementary school, which is where the meeting was held, opened in 2017.
Beeson asked the group to think about their own learning and when it was irresistible.
Answers included when learning was hands on, every day was different, time was allowed for failures and having a say in what they were learning. One participant said the sense of pride in the high school has declined as Eastwood is one of the few districts in the league without a new facility.
The best day of learning is when what they are learning sticks and they want to go to school, Beeson said.
All the information gathered will be used to create guiding principles for design, she said.
“We should be having this discussion whether we are talking about facilities or not,” she said. “This looks at what are we doing for students.”
Superintendent Brent Welker said the district was entering the final stages of fact-finding and what a proposed facility will look like.
He said visioning will establish instructional strategies and once those are set, the goal is to help the community understand the values of a new facility will help the district meet its vision and mission.
Welker said the district is eligible for 36% funding for a project from OFCC with 64% local based on the master plan that started with the elementary school.
He said they needed to consider the costs, feasibility and location of any proposed new facility.
The state will co-fund 103,000 square feet and provide $16 million toward the project.
The district will need 140,000 square feet to provide the same number of classrooms it now has, extended learning spaces, and a bigger cafeteria and gym. That extra square footage will have to be paid for by the taxpayers, Welker said.
The hope is to also upgrade the auditorium, move the administrative offices to the high school’s new north wing, and demolish the other wings.
These projects would be paid for by local taxpayers.
Using the high school’s gym and locker rooms for middle school athletics will save about 10,000 square feet worth of costs, Welker said.
Of the three options for the location of a new building, one was eliminated because it would require multiple phases, which is the longest construction time with the highest cost.
Option two would be to build a new grades 5-12 building in the high school parking lot, thus not disrupting athletic fields. The cons include limiting parking during construction and greater potential for work crews to hit rock.
The third option is to add a facility for grades 6-12 to the northwest of the elementary school. This will require moving the baseball and soccer fields.
Welker said option three was the best location for a new school but the $2.4 million cost of moving the athletic fields may be a problem for some voters. This option also requires building a middle school gym that is not in option two.
Welker said the decision will hinge on how much is too much to ask for.
Eastwood has close to the lowest property tax in the county due to industry support. The new elementary school was paid for by the general fund, not taxpayer dollars, he said.
“Whatever we do, let’s do it right,” Welker said. “Half measures will make it feel cheap and less than what it should be.”
Welker said the preschool, now in the Pemberville school, would move to the existing high school. It and the administrative offices are the only programs still at that 1936 school.
November 2025 is the earliest to go on the ballot with a bond issue, if that is the direction the district decides to go. If the issue fails, the district will have one more attempt in 2026 before its agreement with OFCC expires.
If it passes on the first try, the district will break ground in 2027 after designs and bids are finalized.
