East Muskingum School Board turns down offer to purchase New Concord Elementary School

NEW CONCORD − The East Muskingum Board of Education did not vote on an offer by Connect Real Estate to purchase the New Concord Elementary School for $1 million.

The board and village officials had a public meeting May 20 to discuss the possible sale of the school and surrounding property with the public. The following morning the board called for a special meeting on May 23. The board then released this statement following the meeting:"The board has decided not to move forward with the sale of New Concord Elementary at this time. We will continue to assess our enrollment and existing building configuration. Any changes will be announced after a future board meeting."

Aging buildings and the failure of a levy are at the heart of the issue for the district. It's unclear what the next step may be for the district.

School board president Renee Coll spoke during the public meeting telling the crowd, "We as a board have a responsibility to make sure that we are being fiscally responsible with our taxpayer money. So regardless of whether we move forward with the sale of New Concord Elementary and this property, our configuration needs to change. We cannot continue to spend money on six buildings when we can be in fewer."

Superintendent Dave Adams told the public, "As we approached last May with an expiring levy, we also saw a significant increase in operational costs, post-COVID. We went to our community last May asking for a renewal and an increase to stay the same way we were. Let's operate these six buildings — and in order for us to do that effectively we're going to need more money. I would assume that every person sitting in here today, your costs at home have risen over the last three to five years. We are seeing the same thing as a school district. So therefore we went for that request last May. That request was not met, so we as a district had to make a decision.:

Adams also spoke about renovating all the building. "The new fair school funding formula, they call it fair. It's fair for some, it just wasn't fair for us," he added. The new formulation decreases the state funding the district would receive for open-enrolled students."In summary, here's what we have in a real simple business-mode. We have some aging facilities that are costing us more to operate and, in some regard, we're getting less funding because of that open-enrollment situation. That has enabled us to make some really difficult decisions," Adams said.

Connect had planned to invest $20 to $25 million in the project to renovate the school into a multiuse building that would house a restaurant and retail on the first floor and 30 to 50 apartments on the upper floor.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Jeffersonian: East Muskingum rejects offer to buy New Concord Elementary School