Buckeye Schools approve agreement with OFCC for possible new school

YORK TWP. — The Buckeye Board of Education approved an amended and restated project agreement through the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission's Expedited Local Partnership Program as an initial step toward trying to fund the construction of a new, roughly 195,000-square-foot school in the district. The scope of the possible project would be to build a new school that would house students in grades six through 12 and to abate and demolish the current junior high and high school. The local share is 81 percent, and the state would fund 19 percent of the project excluding locally funding initiatives. An LFI is an addition to the school, which could be a larger gymnasium or a performing arts center, for instance. It would be an $80 million bond issue, Buckeye Schools Superintendent Jeff Harrison said. Around $75 million is what would go toward construction and demolition, and there would be about $5 million in LFIs. "These decisions that we're making and the direction that we're going (are) not only for the students in our school district now, but for the students who are going to attend Buckeye Local Schools for the next 50 years," he said. Under ELPP, districts front the money locally for facilities and get reimbursed from the state at a later date. In addition to the state share percentage for the project, Buckeye has a $14 million credit from the state from building the current elementary school under the program in the 2000s. In the past, when the board of education signed the initial ELPP program, the percentage of the state share was locked in at 19 percent, he said. If it had not been locked in, the state share would be closer to 12 percent today. The next step of the process is to send the signed document to the facilities construction commission, so its members can take it to their next meeting, Harrison said. It will then go back to the board of education for it to sign off on it again. Residents will eventually have the opportunity to vote on whether to pass a bond issue to pay the local share for the project. The board of education has not made a decision yet of whether the issue will be on the ballot in May or November 2023, he said. "(Giving) it to (the facilities construction commission) for their November meeting keeps us on track to be on the ballot in May, if we so choose to be on the ballot in May," he said. "If we didn't do this this week, then we'd have no chance of being on the ballot for May." Contact reporter Madisyn Woodring at (330) 721-4049 or mwoodring@medina-gazette.com.