$40M worth of new schools closed in 3 districts

The investigation focused on 28 area school districts that have received money from the Ohio School Facilities Commission in the last 13 years to build or renovate schools. The money was part of a huge investment the state made in school buildings in order to meet a court-ordered mandate to make education opportunity and facilities more equal throughout the state.

That added up to more than $17 billion in new school buildings statewide.

The investigation, though, found enrollment projections used to forecast how many buildings were needed proved overly optimistic in three local districts. Trotwood-Madison is closing two elementary schools this fall. The Springfield City School District and Tecumseh Local schools are repurposing a new school building each because they didn’t have the students to fill them. All four buildings opened in 2005 or 2006 and closed in the last two years.

Trotwood resident Chester Ray Perkins, 53, blames district officials for the two empty schools. One, Madison Park Elementary, is in his neighborhood.

“They never should have been built. They knew the population of Trotwood was falling before they built those schools,” he said. “Taxpayers should be going nuts over that deal.”

Multimillion dollar projects

The state of Ohio funded about 80 percent of Springfield’s $195 million project to build 16 new schools, according to OSFC data. It paid 77 percent of Tecumseh’s $93 million, six-building project and $50.3 million of Trotwood’s $90 million, five-building project.

The rest of the projects were funded by local bond issues passed by voters.

Trotwood-Madison City Schools Superintendent Rexann Wagner said she recommended closing Madison Park and Westbrooke Village elementary schools because of the district’s financial woes and the loss of nearly one-fourth of its students. The schools opened five years ago with a price tag of about $10 million each.

Springfield’s Clark Middle School was closed and a portion of the building has been repurposed as offices for administrators and some preschool activities. Tecumseh Superintendent Jim Gay said there are preschool and Head Start activities are also planned at the Medway Elementary School building, which closed as an elementary school in June.

Trotwood’s decision to close its schools stem from not receiving any increased operating revenue since 1996 and losing about 1,000 students in the past decade, Wagner said.

“The board understood that bold action had to be taken,” she said of the school board’s 4-1 vote in January to shutter the schools.

The district worked closely with OSFC in 2001-02 by providing historical enrollment data to the commission, which used a formula to project future enrollment. At the time, the district had five elementary schools. OSFC recommended it build two new elementary schools plus an early learning center for preschool to first grade students.

Wagner said no one could have predicted the economic downturn or dramatic enrollment drop.

“That’s nobody’s fault,” she said. “I’d never want to think I was saying the (OSFC) did not do an accurate job because they did. Nobody could have foreseen what happened economically in the nation and in Trotwood. The impact was huge.”

The district, she noted, is dotted with foreclosed homes.

Enrollment projections off

The original enrollment projections for Springfield, Trotwood and Tecumseh school districts were done by DeJong-Healy, a private contractor based in Dublin and hired by the Ohio School Facilities Commission to provide enrollment forecasts. DeJong-Healy is currently the sole consultant for OSFC projections.

DeJong-Healy predicted Tecumseh’s enrollment would increase from 3,597 in the 2003-04 school year to nearly 4,000 by 2014, according to OSFC data. The district’s enrollment has gone the other way — to 3,147 last year, according to the Ohio Department of Education.

The consultant predicted Springfield’s enrollment would decline from 9,953 in 2000-01 to 9,436 by the 2009-10 school year. Springfield’s actual enrollment was 7,286 last year.

Trotwood-Madison’s enrollment was predicted to decline to 3,021 by the 2009-10 school year by DeJong-Healy. The district had 2,740 students instead.

DeJong-Healy officials declined to comment for this story and referred all questions to the OSFC.

Bill Prenosil, planning director for the OSFC, said he’s “not surprised” some districts have had to close new buildings because, at least early on, the OSFC was still figuring out how to accurately predict enrollment. He said there are just as many school districts, if not more, that were underbuilt and “busting at the seams.”

“Enrollment projection is not an exact science,” he said. “This program (state legislators) put together and we immediately had to go out and do something. They didn’t want us to wait 10 years or even five years and perfect a system. We know we are going to have some of those early districts that are going to be problems.”

Wagner said closing the schools was the “prudent” thing to do because it will save operating dollars and allowed the district to consolidate staffing in the three remaining schools. In all, 41 positions were cut last school year, including 27 teaching and 14 classified jobs. She said the resulting savings from closing the schools is about $3 million, which has enabled the school board to seek a smaller levy in November.

“Passing the levy in November is very necessary to keep the three buildings we have operating,” Wagner said.

Trotwood resident Perkins is angry that the district will be going to the voters with the 4-mill operating levy, which would generate $861,000 annually. It is nearly half the size of the 7.5-mill levy that was narrowly defeated in May. He said he plans to vote against it.

“It’s wasted money to begin with,” he said, referring to the closed schools. “Now they’re saying they want more money because they got no money.”

State officials say the drop in enrollment can be attributed to three factors: the state’s voucher program that allows students in underachieving schools to attend higher-achieving ones, an increase in charter schools and the economic downturn.

Residents upset by closures

Susan Cook, whose four daughters, ages 6, 10, 14 and 17, attend Trotwood-Madison schools, lives on the same street as Westbrooke Village Elementary. It pains her to see the neighborhood school closed.

“They’re brand new schools. Now they are going to sit empty and hopefully not get vandalized,” she said. “Hopefully, they will reopen someday.” The closure has led to a shuffling of her children and other students, who on Monday will begin attending the Union Road campus where the high school, early learning center and elementary school are located.

Now, all district second-graders will go to the early learning center. The middle school has been turned into the elementary school for grades three to six, and seventh- and eighth-graders will be moving into the high school.

Cook, 41, who graduated from Trotwood-Madison High School in 1988, remembered the excitement about the district getting 66 percent of the construction cost for its new schools paid for by the state. She voted for the $35 million bond issue needed to generate the additional 34 percent local share of the project.

Passage of Trotwood’s November levy would not result in reopening the schools, Wagner said, and failure would not result in the closure of more buildings.

Wagner said the district hopes it will be able to reopen the schools but stresses it the decision “will strictly be enrollment driven.

“We’re very hopeful as the economy rebounds families will once again come into Trotwood.”

Tecumseh’s decision to close Medway Elementary this year was due to an unanticipated drop in enrollment and numerous failed levies that left the district with a $2.1 million deficit.

Beginning next week, students in kindergarten and first grade will attend Donnelsville Elementary. Second and third grade will be at Park Layne Elementary and fourth and fifth at New Carlisle Elementary. Medway, which cost about $8 million, will be used for preschool and Head Start programs.

“It was financial,” said Gay, the Tecumseh superintendent . “We’ve had a series of failed levies and we’ve had to make reductions in order to avoid any deficit... By using that approach we were able to save sign dollars in terms of staffing.”

Springfield City Schools was discussing closing two new elementary or one middle school as construction crews were putting the finishing touches on its $64 million high school that opened in 2009.

The recommendation came from the state’s Financial Planning and Supervision Commission after the district was placed in fiscal emergency by the state auditor’s office.

Board members opted instead to change all elementaries to K-6 and close Clark Middle School.

“By realigning facilities ...we were able to reduce our district’s operating costs by $500,000 to $700,000 per year,” said Kim Fish, communications consultant for Springfield City Schools.

Clark was built to serve 527 students based on enrollment projections at a cost of about $10 million. There were about 300 students in the building when it closed, Fish said.

The district has combined its preschool programs into Clark, which hosts 429 kids throughout the year.

“In Springfield, preschool is a critical part of our whole education program,” said Superintendent David Estrop.

The closing of Clark remains a sore point for some in the neighborhood. Rachel Sumpter has two children in the district and was vice president of Clark’s booster organization when it closed.

“They made a mistake closing the school,” she said.

Sumpter believes some of the elementary schools are overcrowded after sixth graders were moved back to the elementary building to accommodate the closing of Clark and that preschoolers would be better suited in their neighborhood building where they can get familiar with the school before kindergarten.

OSFC taking hard-line stance

OSFC officials said they have become more conservative in their enrollment projections to prevent scenarios like the ones in Springfield and Trotwood.

The OSFC, funded primarily with state-issued bonds, still has marching orders to provide all 611 school districts and vocational schools in the state the opportunity to build new schools with state assistance.

DeJong-Healy has a two-year, $500,000 contract with the state with an option for renewal in 2012 to continue as the state’s sole projections consultant.

Prenosil said the commission has taken a harder stance with districts that are next in line for school construction assistance and promise to improve and attract new students.

“It makes some districts angry when we project their enrollment to decline and they say, ‘You are planning us for failure, we are trying to improve it,’ ” Prenosil said. “It makes us look like bad guys and they are not happy. But we are doing better (with the projections) and (districts) are starting to realize we know a little more than what they think we do.”

As new projects arise, Prenosil said, districts will have to provide irrefutable evidence to change the OSFC’s enrollment projections.

“The fact is Ohio is losing children and districts are losing kids,” he said. “We are trying to hit the mark and, especially in this economy, we’ve learned we have to be conservative about the projections because the last thing we want to do is waste money.”