Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > May > 18 > Entry
Roosevelt HS: Tell me like I’m in kindergarten
It’s wasn’t quite “out of the mouths of babes,” but it was still priceless.
My colleague Cathy Mong today writes about how a dozen kids who showed up at city council angry about a plan to close their recreation center got a city official to spill some of the details on the city’s plan for a “RecPlex” on West Third Street after Roosevelt High School is torn down by the school board.
Officially, school and city officials have been mum about the details for nearly a week now, since the news first broke that they were working on a joint plan to redevelop Roosevelt, and that the plan includes tearing the historic 83-year-old building down. School officials have been promising an announcement any day and say they are waiting on the city to complete its “due diligence.”
Interim City Manager Rashad Young was trying to explain to the kids why the Linden Center and several other rec centers were slated for closure, and he just couldn’t help but start talking about the proposed “RecPlex” at the Roosevelt site, which he said would be a 50,000 square foot center that would replace six smaller, community based-centers in east and west Dayton. The school board, he said, would build it’s new all-boys K-8 elementary school next to it at the Roosevelt site. (The all-girls Charity Adams Earley Academy opened last fall.)
Rashad also helped bring the financial issues in focus. He said upgrading the current centers would cost an estimated $25 million while a new, state-of-the-art RecPlex would cost $10 million.
Interesting. The rehab cost of Roosevelt has been estimated at $30 million to $35 million. But the cost of a new elementary school is almost certainly under $10 million. So, I suppose the city and school board will argue that new state-of-the-art school and recreation facilities at Roosevelt for a cost of about $20 million is significantly cheaper than rehabilitating the old school, especially if you factor in the savings from closing the city rec centers. Plus, the cost for the new school there would be two-thirds paid by the state under Ohio’s school construction program.
But we won’t really know what the deal looks like until the school board and city finally make it public. Which should be immediately. It’s asking a lot to keep the community guessing on an issue this important for more than a week.
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