The Karns City Area School District is looking for input on their plan to consolidate and renovate their elementary schools.
A public meeting was held last week that detailed the $21.7 million renovation plan to Chicora Elementary School. Under the proposal, the district would also consolidate Sugarcreek Elementary.
“What we’ve looked at is an addition to the Chicora complex and a full renovation to the existing areas. With that we would be able to assimilate all of our Kindergarten through sixth grade students there in the fall of 2023,” Superintendent Dr. Eric Ritzert said.
He said this proposal is a result of both buildings needing renovations, and he believes this is the most cost effective move.
“We went over the rationale from a cost standpoint. We would probably spend as much on the two elementary schools to renovate them, and keep both open as you would if you consolidated. So people would say ‘Why don’t you just do that?’ and it’s a fair question,” Ritzert said. “But when you dig a little deeper, with the decline in enrollment we would not be able to capture the efficiency of the scale of operation.”
He says if the school consolidates into one building for the elementary level, the district would be able to scale the staff appropriately, meaning they could have less teachers if necessary. He also added that it would be easier to add staff if necessary if the grade enrollment increases.
Ritzert said the district made a similar move when Bruin Elementary School closed in 2013, and that no teachers were furloughed or fired.
The project would be funded with a bond. Ritzert said the district is rated A+ by Standard and Poor’s so the funding can be accessed relatively inexpensively. He also added that at the moment, no new taxes would be introduced to pay for the building, but didn’t take it off the table for the future.
“So our annual payment would be $1.2 million annually,” Ritzert said. “When we have our reductions in staffing and building consolidation, we believe there will also be some transportation savings. We think we can offset the $1.2 million by about $800,000 cost reduction. That leaves about $400,000 in net costs we have to come up with in our budget.”
That would be passed along to the tax base Ritzert said, but also acknowledged that the district is funded primarily by state dollars.
“Whether or not we annually need to raise our local property taxes, it’s more impacted by whether or not the state is able to give us a bump in the money they send us to operate,” Ritzert said. He added that if the state can continually increase their allotment to the district, than a tax increase may not be needed.
However, the district by law cannot raise taxes more than 4.1 percent per year.
“We want to do our best to get the factual information out to our constituents and encourage them to post comments. This is a big decision for our community and we want to get it right and get people’s input,” Ritzert said.
There’s currently a 30-day review period underway.
