POLAND — School district officials will spend the next few weeks wrapping up a lot of changes to McKinley Elementary / Poland Middle School in preparation for the start of the 2024-25 school year.

McKinley Elementary, which houses grades kindergarten through 3rd, was built in the 1950s and is attached by a walkway to Poland Middle School, which houses grades 4 through 6 and was built in 1900.

The work began at the end of the prior school year as the district worked to enhance the older school buildings and bring them into 21st Century learning.

“It’s all part of our Bulldog Forging Forward Plan,” said Poland Superintendent Craig Hockenberry. “It comes out of our permanent improvement fund. I use the example of taking a building off its foundation and shaking it. Anything that does not fall out of it is under permanent improvement.”

He said the goal is to fit kindergarten through sixth grade inside the McKinley / Poland Middle School building.

“In order to make that happen, we had to take unusable space and make it usable,” he said.

At McKinley, a former art room from the late 1950s was gutted and turned into a classroom that can hold up to 25 students. Special education class used to take place in the old art room and that had to be moved to a new location. To accomplish that goal, Hockenberry said the former teacher’s lounge was redone to serve as the new special education classroom.

Not far from the special ed room is the McKinley Library. It was a large library and thus was reduced by taking nearly half the space and constructing five separate spaces for services the school uses such as tutoring, language therapists and counselors. The new mini-offices allow for one-on-one instruction.

“Schools from the 1950s were not built for 21st Century learning,” Hockenberry said. “Sensory rooms and calming rooms were not spaces available or used in the 1950s.”

Another detail about Poland Middle School was accessibility. The former high school had rooms designed in 1900. One room that really fit that description was a former chemistry room, which had multiple floor levels that would not accommodate a wheelchair. Because the federal Americans with Disabilities Act requires access for every student, the school had to shut down the old lab.

“It was unused except for storage for decades,” Hockenberry said. “In fact, no schools teach chemistry today the way it was in 1900.”

He said over the past four years, classrooms have been added at Poland Middle School. In 2022, two classrooms were made from existing space. Two more were added in 2023, and this year, the new sixth grade converted lab-to-classroom was added.

“We have added three teachers in each grade (4, 5, and 6),” Hockenberry said. “If we had not added the classrooms, we would have had a class size of 29 to 32. We prefer to keep class size down to 22 to 25, which we have done with the new rooms.”

There are more spaces at Poland Middle School that could be converted, but are not being used or, in the case of the band room, may not be used.

“Right now it is not wheelchair accessible,” Hockenberry said. “If we have no handicapped students in band, we can use the room. If a handicapped student wants to take up band, we will have to move the class somewhere accessible.”

To make classrooms accessible meant adding a lot of lift equipment. To move from the ground floor to the third floor, a wheelchair-bound student would have to have an adult assist and use two separate wheelchair lifts and then an elevator. One of the problems with the lifts is that they take almost the entire width of the staircase. That means tying up the stairs while the students are being moved.

In the basement, there are more sets of stairs, but two classrooms could be opened if access could be figured out. For now, Poland Middle School will be good to go when school starts, but Hockenberry is keeping his eyes on the housing market. He said roughly 88 new homes are coming to Poland, but no one knows how many additional children will be enrolling in Poland schools.

While the district is trying to accommodate the students and upgrade or remodel the existing buildings, it is holding onto Union and North school properties. The plan is to lease them out and hold onto them should they be needed someday.

“Right now it costs us $70,000 to keep each of those buildings closed,” Hockenberry said. “If we could lease them and break even, it would be a win-win.”

LEVY FAILURE

All of the changes are necessary because of the overwhelming defeat in November of a 12.1-mill bond issue and 0.05-mill additional tax levy to build new schools. The levy failed by about 70%.

The Ohio Facilities Construction Commission would have provided 19% of the cost of the $120 million project, which would have made the local cost $105 million over 37 years, Hockenberry said prior to the election. The plan had provisions for a new elementary school where McKinley Elementary is located and new middle and high schools on their current sites.

Hockenberry said the district decided to bring the issue to voters before “sinking millions” into the repair and remodel of existing structures. After the election, he said he looked at the “no vote” as a “yes vote” to fix up and open old schools.

It wasn’t the first time Poland voters defeated a school bond issue. The previous bond issue, defeated by about 62% in 2015, would have provided funds for a new K-8 school on the Dobbins property and renovation of the high school. It also would have covered the cost of demolishing current building sites.

OTHER CHANGES

Other changes made for the new school year include the addition of handicapped ramps on the visitors’ side and the student bleachers at the stadium, a $1.1 million paving program at the high school and a new gym floor in the Poland Field House.

“Next year we will have to look at the high school roof and tackle the 7th and 8th grades to keep them separate from the high school,” Hockenberry said.

For now, it is all about wrapping up this summer’s project list.

“For all schools, summer is a very busy time,” said Director of Operations Matt McKenzie. “This is due to the short window of time to get all projects completed and the schools ready for the next year. We were very fortunate to partner with some good companies that have made these projects run smoothly. Every year we will continue to evaluate the needs of the district and complete any projects to give our students the best educational environment possible.”

McKenzie said the approximate total for this summer’s work is $1.5 million. The funds came from the district’s permanent improvement levy funds.

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