June 11, 2010
UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, OH - The Cleveland Heights-University Heights Board of Education announced at their board meeting yesterday the creation of a new Ad Hoc Facilities Committee that will review the District’s school buildings, their condition and usage, and the community’s current and future educational needs. The Committee will begin their work with a review of a recent report completed by the Ohio School Facilities Commission (OSFC).

The OSFC report, released in April 2010, contains a comprehensive assessment of all of the District’s facilities. The OSFC report contained a number of important findings, including the following:

In terms of their ability to support our current education program, all of our buildings are considered, at best, borderline.

The current configuration of our buildings forces us to maintain an excessive amount of facilities.
Maintaining these excess facilities--making the repairs they need because of their age and condition, and their lack of energy efficiency--all contributes to a significant cost that could be otherwise used for educational purposes.

The total cost to renovate all of our current existing facilities to meet OSFC standards is $236,409,000.
The enrollment projections show our current enrollment of 5,953 dropping to 5,380 by the 2019-2020 school year.

For the sake of planning purposes, the Commission recommends we use the projected 2014-2015 figure of 5,514.

The OSFC also provided two sample plans:

Construction of all new facilities. This plan proposes reducing the number of elementary schools to five, middle schools to two, while retaining one high school.

Renovate Canterbury, Fairfax, Oxford, and Roxboro Elementary Schools to house grades K - 5.

“These are just samples and are not indicative of the direction the district may choose to take. The OSFC report makes the facts clear. The CH-UH City School District simply has too much building space for the number of students we have, and the configuration of those buildings is inadequate to meet our educational needs. Now is the time to address these issues and we are proposing a measured, cautious approach that seeks the widest input and analysis. This is a challenge – and an opportunity. We have the chance now to look at our schools and really re-imagine our facilities and configuration so that they meet the needs of this community into the future,” Superintendent Douglas Heuer said.

The members of the Ad Hoc Facilities Committee will be selected by the administration. The first meeting of the Committee is expected to be in September 2010, and the group’s work should be finished by June 2011.

The Ad Hoc Facilities Committee will be tasked with the following duties:

1. Review the OSFC Assessment Report and gather additional data
   
2. Develop a recommendation to the Board regarding:
   
3. Renovation versus building new
   
4. Grade configuration
   
5. Number of facilities
   
6. Timeline for implementation
   
7. An approach for funding the project