Salem tapped again as fill-in APS board member
By Jeff Gorman
DOWNTOWN AKRON — For the second time in three years, the Akron Public Schools District Board of Education has brought Sam Salem back to fill an empty seat.
Paul Allison’s resignation June 30 opened a seat on the board, and the board made the same choice July 23 that it made after the resignation of Rebecca DiDonato Heimbaugh in 2005. Salem will serve for the rest of 2007. In November, voters will choose a candidate to fill the last two years of Allison’s term, as well as vote for seats held by board members Linda Kersker, Kirt Conrad and the Rev. Curtis Walker. The Summit County Board of Elections deadline to file for the November General Election is Aug. 23. Salem had previously served on the board for almost 27 years before retiring in 1998. The community learning center on West Waterloo Road bears Salem’s name.
“We had many excellent applicants, but we did not want to select someone who might not be re-elected,” said Kersker, board president. “At the end of the process, the future unity of the board and respect for the voters’ choice were our priorities.”
The board chose Salem in an executive
session after the regular meeting. The board had until
July 30 to pick a replacement
or Summit County Probate Court would make the decision.
Salem said the board’s
biggest task is to lobby Columbus to fix the school
funding system.
“We have to find ways to
give property owners some relief,” he said. “In
this area, there are usually 15 levies on the ballot
every fall and about 60 percent of them fail.”
The board had interviewed eight
other candidates two weeks earlier. The eight candidates
that had applied for Allison’s seat are: Cheryl
Nash, a security officer at Akron General Medical Center;
William Green, resident supervisor at
Oriana House; Gary Wyatt, president of He Brought Us
Out Ministry; Barbara Greene, principal of CommonGood
Consulting; Lisa DeMali, shipment coordinator
at FedEx Custom Critical; Jason Haas, research analyst
for the Summit County Department of Community and Economic
Development; Ginger Baylor, a substitute teacher; and
Dianna Smith, a Kent State University business student.
Before the meeting, the Joint
Board of Review met to discuss the district’s
$800 million construction project. The Joint Board,
which is overseeing the project, approved Segment 3
of the project, which would
include six buildings at a projected cost of $119 million.
The Segment 3 buildings are scheduled for construction
in 2010 and 2011, said David James, who is overseeing
the district’s project.
The biggest news involves the
possibility of a new building that would combine Buchtel
High School with Perkins Middle School for grades 7-12
due to declining enrollment. James said the board would
have community meetings to discuss the possibility of
merging the two schools.
Two other Buchtel cluster schools,
Rankin and Schumacher, also are scheduled for Segment
3. Also in the segment are Hyre Middle School and
McEbright and Windemere elementary
schools.
“The [Ohio School Facilities]
commission re-evaluated our high school and middle schools,”
explained James, “and the condition of Ellet,
Garfield and Buchtel have deteriorated to the point
where they need to be replaced. Litchfield is approaching
the demolition category.
“When we looked at renovating
Buchtel, we would have had to pay an extra $12 million
in local funds to cover the extra space that isn’t
used due to the lower population,” he added. “We
wanted to look at combining Perkins and Buchtel in the
same way we’ve combined Goodyear [Middle
School] and East [High School].”
The district decided to renovate
East High School into a building that would house seventh
through 12th graders. When the building is completed,
Goodyear Middle School will close. The sixth-graders
will be divided up among the elementary schools in the
cluster. The merger prevented East from being shut down.
In other business, the Joint
Board also approved the expense of $13,208 for electrical
service and line charges to Ohio Edison for work at
the Sam Salem Community Learning Center.
Representatives of the East High
School Alumni Association
announced the new Jump Start Scholarship Program. When
the renovated East High School is re-dedicated in 2009,
the association plans to award 10-year scholarships
of $1,000 per year to the top 30 students in the senior
class.
In other news, Firestone and
Ellet high schools received national awards from the
High Schools That Work (HSTW) program as Pacesetter
schools.
To achieve that status, the schools
needed to reach goals of 85 percent in several categories,
including graduation and the completion of curriculum
goals.
Chris Pashke, the coordinator
of Firestone’s HSTW program, talked about the
school’s lunch time intervention programs. Students
in the program use half of their 50-minute lunch time
for extra help in Algebra I, Science and Ohio Graduation
Test (OGT) preparation.
Firestone also offers career
education programs in information technology and biomedical
engineering.
The next board meeting is set
for Aug. 13 at 5:30 p.m. at the Administration Building,
70 N. Broadway. The Joint Board of Review will meet
at 4 p.m.
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