(Intro music)

Owen: Oberlin is combining its public schools into one building. But some people have concerns about the current plan. I’m Owen Anderson, and in this podcast segment, we’re gonna to find out the full story. Today, I’m joined by Nina Auslander and Sikeli Jorgensen.

 

Nina: Hi! 

 

Sikeli: Hello. 

 

Owen: So, Nina, Sikeli, where do we begin?

 

Nina: Well, we can begin with November 7th, 2018. Oberlin residents were asked to vote on Issue 11. This was a proposal from Oberlin’s Board of Education to consolidate Oberlin’s existing four public schools into one new building. The vote passed by 8.4%.

 

Owen: Why does the Oberlin Board of Education want to consolidate public schools?

 

Sikeli: Well, it’s hard to maintain four aging buildings. For example, we heard a story about a staircase collapsing in the middle school.

 

Nina: Albert Borroni was recently elected as president of the school board. He told us that Langston Middle School was built in 1917, and the High School was built in the 1960’s. According to Oberlin College’s archives, Eastwood was built in 1955 and Prospect was built at the turn of the 20th century. 

 

Owen: So, the buildings are all over 60 years old. Everyone we talked to agreed that the community needs updated schools.   

 

Nina: Albert Borroni told us how the consolidation plan came to be. 

 

• Albert Borroni: Way back in 2006, there were the board members and a group of people asked for a state assessment and they came in and assessed all four buildings. The assessment came back, I think a little high, but nonetheless, it was quite a bit—it was in the millions of dollars. It was close to what it would cost to build a new building. And that was the cost for each of those to bring them up to current standards. 2008, they redid the assessment because they started to get more serious about it. 2012, they started to do group meetings with the community, to ask them what they were thinking, what they would like to see, how it would go. I believe in 2015 there was the intention of putting a ballot issue on. That got either pulled or just never went to the ballot. And then in 2016, they started to think more seriously again about putting it on the ballot. It ended up on the ballot in 2018 and it passed.  

 

Nina: The plan is that the new school campus will be built in two phases. According to the Lorain Morning Journal, the K-5th wing will be built by 2023, and the 6-12th wing will be finished by 2026.

 

Owen: Maintaining these old buildings is expensive for Oberlin’s community, so building a new campus sounds like a good solution. But the vote only passed by 8.4%. 

 

Sikeli: Yeah, it was close because a lot of people were unsatisfied with this plan. One concern is the increased property tax that will fund construction of the new school campus. According to the Lorain Morning Journal, the new tax is 133 dollars annually for a property worth 100,000 dollars. 

 

Owen: But increased taxation only makes up part of the community's concerns. 

 

Nina: To find out more, we interviewed Kimberly Jackson Davidson, an Oberlin College administrator, whose children went through the Oberlin public school system. 

 

Sikeli: Kimberly and a colleague helped facilitate community dialogues, along with members of the League of Women Voters. Residents of Oberlin were invited to discuss their concerns about school consolidation, and learn more about the Board of Education’s plans. 

 

Owen: Kimberly told us about the community’s financial concerns.

 

• Kimberly: It's my sense that whether people had fewer resources, say on a fixed income or people had significant disposable income, that the concerns were always dual. Why am I giving my money? What will I get from this? I think trust was a significant issue and I think that it connected to some other things that felt missing to people. People want an opportunity for there to be ongoing dialogue, for there to be transparent information shared by the school system about what's motivating decisions to spend money, how it's going to be spent, and how ultimately it will improve the quality of education. So I think I often heard people acknowledging that the buildings are old but concern for taking old problems into new buildings. 

 

Owen: Joan Webster and Debbi Walsh are members of a group called Oberlin Concerned Citizens, which opposed Issue 11. We did not have a chance to interview them in person, but they sent us a written statement, which echoed concerns raised in Kimberly’s dialogue groups. They worry about bringing old problems into new buildings. Here’s Anisa, a member of our podcast project, reading from the written statement of Debbi Walsh and Joan Webster. 

They say that, consolidation, quote

 

• Anisa: Does not address community concerns about academics & discipline related to long-standing issues such as school culture and declining enrollment as families opt to go to other public or private schools. In some ways it even masks these issues, as some people feel that a new building will fix or address some of these fundamental issues.

 

Nina: Debbi Walsh was a member of the Facilities Committee, which is a group made up of school board members and community members that looked at various aspects of the consolidation issue. Again, this is Anisa reading for Debbi and Joan: 

 

• Anisa: Some form of consolidation was needed given declining enrollment and the expense of maintaining four buildings that were not being fully utilized. However, we don’t feel that a costly, new pre K-12 building was the best possible choice for consolidation. As a member of the facilities committee (Debbi) and as citizens who looked at all the information available, we believe that consolidation and renovation within our existing buildings was never adequately explored. In our estimation, renovation & consolidation into two of our existing buildings could have been accomplished for less than one-half of the cost of the proposed new building.

 

Sikeli: Albert Barroni believes that the school board did do the necessary research to determine that building a new school is more sustainable. 

 

• Albert Barroni: So the board and community started looking at this issue of what are we going to do about aging buildings that are supporting, or were built for, a population that's almost twice as big as the current population of students. And the process since that time, in my opinion, has been very thorough. We've looked at whether it made sense to keep the buildings as they were and just update them. We looked at what a consolidated system would look like. We looked at a two building system. The effect on the academics, the effect on the community. All of that went into play. And I think 13 years is probably enough time to make a decision one way or the other. And I'm very grateful that the community decided to move forward with a consolidated building. I'm convinced that that's the best approach, both financially and academically. 

 

Nina: So, essentially, we heard different opinions on whether or not building a new school is necessary. We heard from Debbi Walsh and Joan Webster that they felt renovating older schools wasn’t adequately explored, and we heard from Albert Borroni that the school board does believe the necessary research was conducted. 

 

Sikeli: Albert Borroni also acknowledged that a new building won’t solve all the challenges that currently exist in the public schools. 

 

• Albert Borroni: We're hoping that the academics can become more strengthened and also address issues such as bullying if we can. I'm not sure that the building is going to do that in and of itself. That's something we need to start addressing and we've begun that already.

 

Owen: Every person we interviewed had something to say about the role Oberlin College students have when it comes to voting on local issues. 

 

Nina: It is true that some Oberlin college students voted on Issue 11. We heard from Kimberly how people in the dialogue series felt about Oberlin College students voting. 

 

• Kimberly: I think that a lot of ire about students voting is related to the fact that people who are older don't like decisions about, say, limited income or fixed income situations being impacted by people who are going to pass through the city, be here for four years, and then we're living for decades to come with those decisions.

 

Owen: Some community members had doubts with student voting, problems with the increase in taxes, and lack of confidence in the current plan; however, we also heard high hopes for school consolidation.

 

Sikeli: Carmen, who prefers that we only use her first name, was another community member we interviewed. She was part of the community dialogues, and shared her positive thoughts about Issue-11. 

 

• Carmen: We definitely need improved schools. We need improved technology. We need more support systems for our teachers. And the more I understand about this project, it feels like it's going to provide those things. One point 50, 60, 70, 80 a hundred years ago, people invested in the future of Oberlin, but the schools that were built then, that we benefit  from now, and those have run their course. And so we are paying it forward really. And it's also just an investment in keeping Oberlin a good place to live, keeping people coming here. So many small towns die out.

 

Nina: Carmen also commented on the issue of tax levies: 

 

Carmen: So that conversation around, I don't want my tax money to be used for schools, it's not really for the schools. It's an investment in your community. That's how I see it. And so when I hear that, I get where they're coming from, we live on limited income, our money matters, but it's an investment in each other and in our community.

 

Sikeli: When asked if they had positive views of consolidation, Debbie Walsh and Joan Webster mentioned that over time there might be lower costs that would decrease the need for so many tax levies. In addition, one school campus would allow families to drop-off and pick-up students at one location.

 

Nina: Albert Borroni looks forward to what the new school might do for Oberlin.

 

• Albert Borroni: We're hoping that the consolidation will help build community. We're hoping that the building can also be used for the community, not just for school from eight o'clock until 3:30. The building also could be a sense of pride and we are hoping that it will be. Everything we've looked at makes us feel that this building will be something that Oberlin city, Oberlin community can be proud of. 

 

Owen: Despite the concerns of some Oberlin community members, school consolidation did pass and a new campus will be finished by 2026. Oberlin will continue to discuss school consolidation in Community Dialogues. If you wish to hear more or contribute to the story, check out Remembering Oberlin Public Schools: Harvesting School Stories Project, you can hear stories about the Oberlin Public School System. If you wish to stay updated on the process of consolidation, please visit the Building Our Future page at www.oberlinschools.net.