PIERPONT TOWNSHIP — Township residents concerned about the loss of their elementary school will take to the byways in the near future to gauge residents’ opinions on what direction, if any, should be taken regarding saving Pierpont Elementary.
The decision to sample opinion by going door to door was made by the citizens group, which has been meeting since September 2008. The Buckeye Local Schools Board of Education voted earlier this year to close the K-6 building at the end of this school year and bus the students to Kingsville Elementary next year.
The group met at Pierpont Presbyterian Church on Thursday evening to share research, ideas and concerns. George Simonoff, who moderated the meeting, said it was the fourth such gathering.
Simonoff shared his research on forming a community school, which would operate within the Buckeye Local District and provide programming otherwise not available in other Buckeye buildings. The school board would have to approve the action, and once a contract were signed, the community school would be eligible for federal grant money. Students would be treated as open-enrollment students with their money going to the new community school.
It would be at least a year, however, before the school could be formed, and several of the residents expressed concern that the old school building is in such poor condition that expending the effort to form a community school would be futile. Parents who will be sending their students to other schools in the fall also expressed concerns about uprooting their youngsters once the community school were up and running.
Residents also talked about redistricting — asking a neighboring district to annex the Pierpont Township portion of the Buckeye Local District. Gaylord Millard, chairman of the township trustees, said he did some preliminary research into the process and was not encouraged by the initial responses he received from a state office.
Tom Hunt, a Pymatuning Valley Board of Education member, attended the meeting and said 52 open-enrollment packets have been picked up by Pierpont families. He says PV Local Schools has the capacity to absorb the Pierpont students and will provide a bus pickup site about three miles south of town.
Joe Kemp said he and his wife already have decided to open-enroll their children.
“This is one of the those things that happen in life,” said Kemp, who described the group’s efforts to keep a school in Pierpont as “swinging at shadows.”
Residents also talked about the possibility of buying the building and converting it to a community center. The building will require some expensive repairs, a new roof at a cost of $30,000 or more, and recharging of the septic system, for $20,000. The $30,000 annual natural gas bill is also a concern.
“That’s a big burden for the township to take the building. That’s a big challenge for us,” Simonoff said.
“The way things are right now, we could not sustain that,” Millard said.
Darla Richcreek said she’d rather see the school razed than to have the township buy it and have the building end up looking like some of the old neglected former schools elsewhere in the townships.
Simonoff and Cameron Marcy decided they should not investigate the various options without first determining if they have strong backing from the residents; thus, the decision to survey them.
About three to four dozen people come out for the meetings; the school has about 110 resident students.
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