Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Wednesday, March 1, 2006
You play school board
The Dayton school board faces a tough, tough problem with Roosevelt High School. Put yourself in a school board member’s shoes for a moment. Here is the situation.
Roosevelt High School was one of the nation’s largest schools when it was built in 1923 and its architecture alone makes it an important artifact. Plus, the school played an intricate role in the city’s history as Dayton’s first integrated high school. The stories of it’s troubles with integration — including the notorious separation of black and white students for activities like swimming — are an intimate part of the city’s history and experiences attending Roosevelt helped shape many of Dayton’s most important leaders.
Most schools that are tagged “historically significant” are truly not, in my view. Most of the time schools have not played an important historical role. Rather, they are important because they are “emotionally significant” to a community that has relied on that school through generations in countless ways. You can argue that emotional significance is a reason to keep a building too, but it shouldn’t be confused with real historic significance.
In the case of Roosevelt, it cannot be argued that the school is not historic.
With more than 300,000 square feet, Roosevelt is a massive and ancient structure that was not well cared for through the years. It is very, very expensive to maintain. Even empty, Dayton spends $15,000 a month on maintenance — that’s $180,000 a year that could be spent educating kids.
The board has considered renovating Roosevelt and using it as a school along with other services. But the costs are huge. Their estimates for rehab are around $30 million, and the district just cannot afford to spend that kind of money. By comparison, the could build three elementary schools for the same cost.
Everyone agrees the best route is for someone else to take over the building and revitalize it. The school board cannot be the ones to do this. It is not a community development organization and it already has spent too much time and energy dealing with this distracting problem.
There are two strong redevelopment proposals, each with its own separate financing. Some wonder why these groups can’t work together and combine their financing, but they have very different visions for what Roosevelt can be in the future.
Above all else, the board does not want to relinquish control unless it is certain the developer can pull off its plan.
The hardest part of this is making an accurate judgment about the financing of the two redevelopment proposals. As much as the board might want to just take a chance with one of them, it really can’t. Nobody can afford for redevelopment to fail. If the board gives up the building and the developer fails, there will be nobody to rescue the school. It could just sit and rot for years, which does nobody any good.
Unfortunately, neither of the proposals have a financing plan that is a slam dunk.
If the board cannot be confident there is a viable redevelopment plan, they have one other very unattractive alternative. They can tear the school down.
This is their one chance to tear it down cost effectively and ensure no eyesore will be left on West Third Street. If they do it now, they will qualify for state matching funds through the Ohio School Facilities Commission, which means the state will pay two-thirds of the $900,000 or so cost of demolition. This can only happen now, while the district still owns the building and while it has OSFC projects underway.
The worst case scenario for the board is to give up control of the building, see the developer fail, be unable to tear it down and be blamed for years to come as the building rots.
So that’s the situation. If you were the board, what would you do?
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