Thursday, May 06, 1999
Defeat crushes school officials
Springboro Elementary won't open
BY MIRIAM SMITH
The Cincinnati Enquirer
SPRINGBORO — Diane Trifiro drove by Springboro Elementary School and cried Wednesday.
Mrs. Trifiro, vice president of the Springboro Board of Education, was frustrated after voters defeated by a margin of 218 votes a five-year, 4.6-mill emergency operating levy that would have allowed the district to open the renovated school. The issue would have generated $1.85 million annually.
It's the third time an operating levy has failed in Springboro in the last two years.
The school can't open because the district doesn't have the money to hire staff. So instead of opening to about 500 fourth- and fifth-grade students, the building — which underwent a $4.2 million renovation and is nearly complete — will be empty this fall.
And students who would have been milling through its halls will crowd into Clearcreek Elementary, where class sizes could surge to at least 30 students in each fifth-grade class, Mrs. Trifiro said.
Sandy Wray, principal at Clearcreek Elementary, will have to find room for all those students who would otherwise have gone to Springboro Elementary.
“It's not going to be a fun year, not when we have that nice building sitting across the street empty,” she said.
It also means the district likely will have to cut some high school electives and won't be able to introduce seventh-grade pre-algebra and algebra, and additional foreign language classes at the junior high and high school levels.
Springboro's explosive growth — it added 160 students this year and was the seventh-fastest-growing in Greater Cincinnati over the last five years — has led to difficulties in keeping up with staffing demands, Superintendent Gary Meier has said.
The district's growth is expected to continue, as this fall's kindergarten class is already the biggest ever, Mrs. Trifiro said.
“I can't understand why the community gave us the money to renovate that building knowing we were going to ask for operating money to operate the building,” she said.
In November 1995, the district approved a 6.49-mill bond issue for $29.8 million in construction that included a high school, which opened last fall. The junior high students have moved to the old high school, and the junior high has been shut down for renovations. Officials hoped to reopen it as Springboro Elementary.
Mrs. Trifiro said there's nothing the district can do to open the school this fall. Even if the board elected to have a special election in August and the issue were to pass, it would still be too late to hire the needed staff, she said.
“We tried (in January) to figure out a way to open the building without asking for money, and there isn't a way to do it,” she said.
Jonathon Wright Elementary, which has kindergarten through second grade, was built for 500 students and has nearly 800, Mrs. Trifiro said.
High school Principal Jack Poore said some electives were cut last fall and one or two more likely will be lost this fall because there won't be enough teachers.
Springboro prides itself on the large percentage of students who go on to college, but the district needs to stay competitive with its course offerings, he said.
Many classes already have more than 30 students, he said. “When class sizes get too large, you lose contact with kids,” Mr. Poore said.
Board member Charles Anderson said the board will discuss what to do next at its meeting Tuesday. “It's really hard to understand,” he said of the vote.
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