I recently attended a presentation given by the Wooster City Schools about the upcoming school building levy.
I want to share my own impressions of both the presentation and the questions asked by community members afterwards.

The meeting was held at Buehlers Milltown with about 20 people attending.
The Superintendent made a presentation for half an hour and then took questions for a full hour.

• The Presentation –
  The superintendent seemed to have 5 main points he wanted to address:
  What was the previous building plan and why did it fail?
  What is the new building plan?
  What is the cost of the new plan?
  What will happen to Cornerstone, pass or fail?
  What will the redistricting look like, pass or fail?

The Previous Plan –
The school district last had a levy on the ballot 2 years ago, spring 2023.
That proposal would have built a new middle school, a new elementary school, torn down and replaced Cornerstone, and came with a restructuring of the district to remove neighborhood elementary schools.
The cost was $102 million, 6.7 mils.
The bond would last for a 36 year term.
The State of Ohio would contribute 33% of the essentials cost but those funds were not to be expected for 7-10 years down the road.
The community voted to reject that plan.

After the levy failed the schools went back to the drawing board.
The administration put on community feedback meetings, held community tours at several schools, and commissioned a survey to better understand the community.

The schools found the following popular ideas:
The cost was too high.
There was interest in just a new middle school.
8th grade should be removed from the high school, where it is currently.
Cornerstone should be preserved as a building but maybe not a school.
The community wants elementary schools to remain as neighborhood schools whereas the educational staff wanted grades consolidated into a single building like grades 5th-12th currently are.

With this input they made a new plan.

The New Plan –
The schools have a new plan that will be on the ballot this spring.
This new plan would build a new middle school and middle school athletic fields.
The new middle school would then take in the 8th grade from the high school to house grades 6th-8th.
The high school would then house 9th-12th grades again.
Edgewood would stop serving as the middle school and instead house grades 3rd-5th.
Keen, Parkview, and Melrose would house grades K-2nd as neighborhood style schools.
PreK would be moved to either Parkview or Keen.
Cornerstone would be closed.

The New Cost –
The new plan will cost $67 million, 3.4mils.
The bond would again last 36 years.
The State of Ohio would again contribute 33% of essentials costs, a total of about $9 million, but are now expected a much sooner 2 years from build.
[After the meeting I learned that $2 million of the $67 million is for the new athletic facilities]

The Futures of Cornerstone –
If the levy passes:
The schools are looking to remove Cornerstone from their books and not keep the property as it is very expensive to maintain.
The Littlest Generals Preschool would be moved to either Parkview or Keen.
The administration is not looking to profit from the sale but would like to enable the preservation of the building as a community landmark.
If the schools sell the building they are legally required to sell to the highest bidder and would therefore have no control over its fate.
So the administration is coordinating with the Wooster Growth initiative of the city to explore options with more control.
Options currently being explored would keep the play lab as a park and look to preserve the iconic building core.
Options for uses include housing, a community center like YMCA, or even medical/therapy facilities.

If the levy fails:
Cornerstone would be kept as a school but would require renovation and updating to current code standards.
The cost of bare minimum return to functionality is estimated to cost $26 million.
Over the next few years it is also estimated to need an additional $9 million in modern upgrades.
The school district does not have this money in reserve.
It has not been decided how this would be funded but the schools would need to return the to community for most of these funds if Cornerstone is to remain a functioning school.

Redistricting –
The school district has become imbalanced with disproportionate growth on the north end of Wooster.
This means that redistricting is needed whether the levy passes or fails.
(My own daughter goes to Cornerstone in a class of 16 children in a huge room. I know of children at Keen in a class of 26 in a smaller room.)
To address this the board of education voted late last year for a redistricting plan that has cases for both if the levy passes and if it fails.
Both plans are a mix of neighborhood lower elementary and grade consolidated upper elementary.
The timing of the change and the specific buildings used is different depending on the levy passing or failing.

If the levy passes:
The schools will delay redistricting until the new middle school is fully completed.
This is estimated to be 3 years out, making the redistricting take effect around 2028 or 2029.
The district will be redrawn to balance student populations.
Grades 9th-12th will be at the high school.
Grades 6th-8th will be at the new middle school.
Grades 3rd-5th will be at Edgewood.
Grades K-2nd will be at 3 neighborhood primary schools Keen, Parkview, and Melrose.
Preschool will be either at Parkview or Keen.

If the levy fails:
The schools will be redistricted as soon as practical.
This would take effect for the 2026/2027 school year.
The district will be redrawn to balance student populations.
Grades 8th-12th will remain at the high school.
Grades 7th-5th will remain at Edgewood.
Grades 3rd-4th will be consolidated in a renovated Cornerstone.
Grades K-2nd will be at neighborhood primary schools Keen, Parkview, and Melrose.
Preschool will remain at Cornerstone’s Littlest Generals.

The superintendent showed a video of what the new middle school might look like.
He mentioned that a video of what the insides might look like is being worked on by the architects and he hopes to have that for the community before we vote.

Materials were passed out that included QR code links to sites for comments, information on the plan, and how to contact school administration.

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• Questions and Answers –
  After the presentation the superintendent spent an hour answering questions.
  Instead of going through every question and answer, here are my impressions by topic.

State funding help –
The State’s financial contribution is not dependent on Federal funding and is secure from recent turmoil.
The State contribution is only for essentials, at current needs, and cannot be used on things like athletics facilities.
The $9 in State funding could be used by a future board of education to pay down the bond, shortening the 36 year lifetime.

Cornerstone cost –
If the levy fails then the cost to renovate and update Cornerstone would be about half the levy price tag.
Cornerstone was recently assessed for this renovation and upgrade price tag by the firm Fanning Howey, a different firm than the one working on the middle school project.
Instead of a new building levy this would likely be a permanent improvement levy, which I don’t think the State would contribute funding to.
Cornerstone has no expected sale profit, the district is more looking at saving money by not having to pay for its upkeep.
The building would not be torn down as that would cost over $1 million by itself.

Grade location changes –
This topic is somewhat complicated because there didn’t seem to be questions about the specifics of the format or the different times for the changes to take effect.
Instead, concerns were raised about the wisdom of consolidating grades.
For some attendees there seemed to be a desire to support the schools but discomfort with the new shape of the district for both outcomes of the levy.
The redistricting plan, regardless of the passage or failure of the levy, was approved by a vote of the board and would only be changed by a similar board policy shift.
It is, as they say, a done deal already.
Because of this redistricting is disconnected from the levy vote.
I will leave out the justifications for and against the redistricting plan.
This should be debated elsewhere but I did want to note that this complaint was raised and responded to.

Wooster’s future growth –
Attendees mentioned different versions of Wooster growing or shrinking over time and the effects it has had.
Rubbermaid was very involved in the funding and reasoning for building the current high school back in the 90’s, then it left Wooster.
As a result of that population shrink Wooster closed and sold half its elementary schools.
The high school capacity remains somewhat over built but the middle school is underbuilt for current needs.
Wooster is now expected to grow again but the administration said it was not expecting exponential growth.
Instead, it is expecting modest growth and wants to be ready for that future.

School security –
This was mentioned briefly but it seemed to warrant its own note.
The new middle school would have modern security features built in.
It and the high school would also benefit from being a close campus where police can keep a central presence.

Community concerns –
There were some attendees that were making comments without specific questions.
These also struck me as important to share:
Without Cornerstone the south of Wooster might be left as a community dessert.
Good schools and facilities are important to keeping property values and making Wooster an attractive place to live and work.
If the Littlest Generals facility at Cornerstone is to be abandoned this plan may bring no benefit to preschoolers.
School bonds seem to never be paid off early.
The “what” but not the “why” is being presented.

School funding is complicated –
There is one final topic that I will mention here: How much more money did the schools get when property taxes went up?
This is amazingly complicated.
The summary is that only about 10% of the school’s budget was eligible to receive an increase from the recent property tax hike.
This is confusing and counterintuitive.

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On this last point I plan to dig into much more detail.
I have contacted the district treasurer and she will try to walk me through the complexities.
Once I have done that I will try to distill that down and translate it into something we can more easily grasp.

If you would like to attend the next presentation it will be held on March 5th at Cornerstone from 5:30pm – 7pm.