You won't want to miss meeting

At the request of the school board, I am using this space to promote a community conversation that will begin next Tuesday night at the school board meeting. At that session, the board will be even more eager than usual to hear from the community.

There are two facilities concerns that will consume much of the evening's meeting, and community input will be essential. First, the board is considering placing a one mill, five year issue on the ballot in May that would be used exclusively to pay for a completely refurbished track and tennis courts for the use of the schools and the community. The second issue is the idea of building entirely new school district facilities.

First, a little history about the track and tennis courts. Town historians may recall in 1980 the schools built the track around the football field at OHS, and volunteers moved the lights and the bleachers from the middle school to the high school.

The track was in top shape through the 80s, and the conference and district meets were routinely held at OHS. Several Oberlin students also received track scholarships.

Likewise, long time residents may recall when the only tennis courts in town belonged to the Fauvers, the Renfros, and Oberlin College. In 1981, the town and schools built the courts behind OHS. County tournaments were often held on those courts.

In the late 1990s, it was discovered that some of the land on which Pleasant School (now the Lorain County Academy and the Boys and Girls Club) sat belonged to the city. In exchange for the city transferring that land to the schools, in 2002 the schools agreed to maintain the tennis courts, relieving the city of that responsibility.

Fast forward to today, and the both the track and the tennis courts are in disrepair. There has not been a high school home track meet at OHS in more than a decade (one was held at Oberlin College last year), and the occasional home tennis match is played at the college, which generously does their best to accommodate high school track and tennis athletes practicing at their facilities, though the college athletes understandably have first priority.

Neither the OHS tennis courts nor the OHS track (in their current state) can serve the students or the community.

There was a volunteer campaign in 2004 to raise money to build a new track and tennis courts. About $37,000 was raised, along with a commitment of $75,000 from the school board and some potential promises from foundations of perhaps $120,000 more.

The price tag then, as now, for the combined repairs is close to a million dollars. It is clear that a true fix for the track and courts exceeds the capacity of a fundraising effort, which is why the board is contemplating the 1 mill, 5 year levy next Tuesday.

The second issue the board will discuss is the larger issue of school facilities.

Officials from the Ohio School Facilities Commission will be at the Feb. 9 meeting. These state officials did an analysis of all of the Oberlin school buildings a couple years ago and found them all to be both substandard and more costly to renovate to bring up to state educational standards than to start over with new buildings.

The Oberlin School Board intends to have an earnest discussion about a major bond issue campaign to build an entirely new school district. There will be discussion of a campus concept, which could result in enormous operational savings for Oberlin taxpayers.

Educating 1,150 students in four buildings is profoundly inefficient in the eyes of the state. They fund the Oberlin schools as though we have two buildings.

A campus concept would result in fewer administrators and staff, sharing one food service facility instead of four, one library arrangement, one theater/auditorium, a more efficient gymnasium arrangement, much more energy efficient buildings, better lighting, appropriately-sized classrooms, and many other efficiencies that could easily save over a million dollars annually -- approaching 10 percent of the annual district budget. We could even become the first carbon-neutral school district in America.

Even more exciting is the possibility of co-locating a community center, a fitness or wellness center, the public library, a center serving early childhood and/or seniors, or some other public purpose facility with the schools. Such an option provides great synergy and a sense of pride and togetherness that would benefit all of Oberlin.

Whether all of this sounds exciting or foolish to you, please come to the board meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 9, where the conversations will begin. Perhaps we can take inspiration from Greg Mortenson successfully building schools for Muslim girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan (ref: Three Cups of Tea) to lead Oberlin to have a community wide conversation about new schools. The board is eager for your feedback.