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$40M worth of new schools closed in 3 districts

The districts built the schools based on poor enrollment projections.

Chester Ray Perkins, 53, of Trotwood takes issue with the Trotwood-Madison School District’s closing of two relatively new elementary schools: Madison Park (shown) and Westbrooke Village. Perkins thinks the district should have known enrollment would decline and the schools wouldn’t have been built.

Chris Stewart/Dayton Daily News Staff Photogra Chester Ray Perkins, 53, of Trotwood takes issue with the Trotwood-Madison School District’s closing of two relatively new elementary schools: Madison Park (shown) and Westbrooke Village. Perkins thinks the district should have known enrollment would decline and the schools wouldn’t have been built.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Teesha McClam/Springfield News-Sun Westbrooke Village

ENLARGE PHOTO

Map: Area school districts that received state funds for building projects since 1997

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By Lucas Sullivan, Margo Rutledge Kissell and Megan Gildow-Anthony
Staff Writer Updated 1:32 PM Sunday, August 14, 2011

About $40 million worth of new schools in three area districts have been taken out of service because projections used to build the facilities grossly miscalculated the student enrollments the districts would have, a Dayton Daily News investigation has found.

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.”

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New schools by the numbers

314: School districts and joint vocational schools that have received money to renovate or build new buildings since the Ohio School Facilities Commission started in 1997. There are 611 school districts (not counting vocational schools) in the state.

1,043: New or renovated buildings completed or in the process of being built funded partly with OSFC money.

$10.4 million: Average state subsidy for new or renovated school buildings under OSFC program

$16.4 million: Average cost for renovated or new buildings, including local money

$2 billion: Money spent to date in the Dayton area’s 28 school districts to build or renovate schools under the OSFC program

$10.9 billion: State’s cost to build or renovate 1,043 buildings in 314 school districts and joint vocational schools

Source: Ohio School Facilities Commission

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What is the OSFC?

The Ohio School Facilities Commission was created by the legislature in 1997 in response to a state Supreme Court decision that the state’s system for funding building maintenance was unconstitutional and caused a negative impact on poorer districts.

The OSFC handles the oversight of the building projects and awards assistance based on a district’s financial need.

Legislators appropriated about $300 million in construction aid to school districts. In 1999 then Gov. Bob Taft switched funding for the program, using $10.2 billion Ohio received from a lawsuit settlement with the country’s four largest tobacco companies over their marketing practices. Ohio now issues bonds to fund the program.

The state projected then it would cost about $23 billion over 12 years to rebuild Ohio’s schools. Ohio has spent nearly $11 billion since 1997 to rebuild schools in a little less than half of the state’s 611 districts.

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