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District reviews new elementary school plans

By Megan Moony, For The Miami Student

The Talawanda Board of Education and the Oxford City Council have recently been at odds about the district's budgetary decisions for a new elementary school.

The new elementary school will be built on the old Kramer Elementary school grounds, which were reduced to rubble early last fall in preparation for new construction.

The plan for a new elementary school was given the go-ahead in November 2013, when the state promised $11.5 million in rebates for construction the district had already completed, such as the new high school completed last year. Talawanda is getting further funding from the sale of the old high school grounds to Miami University for $2 million.

The original budget was $16.4 million, but after the construction manager reviewed the schematic design, the project was actually priced $2 million over budget. The Board of Education then pulled back to take another look at their plans.

"We had a series of meetings. Some of them rather contentious," said Treasurer and CFO Mike Davis.

"We are right on the bubble," he said of the budget.

With cuts on certain non-necessities, the budget was brought down to the original proposed price while still meeting state standards. The biggest cut was replacing a geothermal heating and cooling system with a traditional boiler/chiller system, which made up 30 percent of the budget constraints.

"This building will be state of the art. Built not only to the Ohio School Design Manual Standards … but this building will also be a 'green' building built to the LEED Silver standard," said Talawanada's Superintendent, Kelly Spivey.

However, the Oxford City Council had some concerns with the design.

"Some things they did not comply on were curbing, parking lots and sign sizes," said Oxford City Planner, Sam Perry.

The discrepancies between the City Council's standards and Talawanda's plans could cause dispute.

"I think we will resolve it, but it's concerning," Davis said.

Some of their specific variances on city codes were the height of light poles and width of sidewalks. However, during their most recent meeting on March 27, these disagreements with Oxford City Council were resolved. The district's plans will allow variances in the requested measurements of light poles and sidewalks, and the board has adjusted their plans for curbing to meet the City Council's standards.

The Conditional-Use permit was presented to City Council last week, which would grant the district the right to build in a residential area. Without it, they cannot build the elementary school.

Also during last week's meeting, despite efforts to bring down costs, the construction manager found some of the proposed materials were causing yet another over-budget estimate. Some such materials were the tile, windows and the kitchen equipment.

Davis fears construction may now be pushed back to mid-May at the earliest, but hopes to finally shrink the budget enough to start getting shovels in the ground. The current projected completion of the new elementary school is August 2016.

"We're right on the cusp of having a schedule issue," Davis said, regarding how this new delay will affect construction.

A follow-up budget meeting will be held Monday, April 6, in which the Talawanda Board of Education hopes to finally bring down costs enough to proceed with plans to start building.