“It’s been ready,” Superintendent Mindy McCarty-Stewart said of the facilities plan. “This gives the community more time to understand and ask questions and just unpack all the details.”
A community forum is scheduled for 6 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 19, at Kettering Middle School, 3000 Glengarry Drive. Topics are expected to include the master facilities plan, bond issue and merger of Kettering and Van Buren middle schools beginning next school year.
Kettering’s future-ready facilities plan calls for revamping the district’s footprint from 12 buildings to eight, split in two segments over a span of 10 years.
The district is eligible for 43% of the cost of basic construction to build new school buildings from the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission, which is a state agency that partners with and provides funds to districts for new buildings.
Board member Bill Lautar said saying no to the state funds means the district would still need to pay about a couple hundred million dollars in repairs and renovations for buildings in their 60s and 70s.
“We all, as Kettering residents, have been paying money to the state through our taxes. If we don’t take advantage of that, somebody down the road is going to. So instead of your money coming to Kettering, the next district in line, as far as getting state help, they’re going to get our money,” he said.
The first segment is expected to take five years to complete and will cost about $222 million. The entire project was estimated to cost around $480 million, with a total local share of about $321 million, Kettering Treasurer Justin Blevins said previously.
The estimated cost of the bond, according to Kettering Schools, is roughly $210 for each $100,000 in property valuation per year, with some relief offered for qualifying seniors or those with disabilities.
Segment 1
The first segment involves building a new middle school fronting Far Hills Avenue on the Fairmont High School campus, tearing down and rebuilding the FHS academic wing and demolishing Van Buren, which will be repurposed for new athletic and activity practice fields.
The new middle school will be two or three stories and will have 220,000 square feet, which nearly 62,000 square feet dedicated to 50 classrooms and 13 science/STEM spaces in the academic core, according to the district.
Fairmont will retain all but the academic wing, which will be replaced with a nearly 180,000-square-foot addition of two or three stories, which will include 61 classrooms and 17 science labs in 85,000 square feet.
There also will be necessary improvements made to keep the elementary schools — to be addressed during the plan’s second phase — safe, warm and dry.
Segment 2
The second segment is to build four new neighborhood elementary schools for pre-kindergarten through fifth grades and to renovate Greenmont Elementary School, which was built in 2005, making it the newest in the district.
During construction, the Kettering Middle School building would be used as swing space.
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