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A state agency established almost 20 years ago has collaborated with school districts across Ohio to build and renovate about 1,100 school buildings to date.
The Ohio Facilities Construction Commission, now the umbrella agency of the Ohio School Facilities Commission, is still celebrating groundbreakings as it continues to fund building projects for school districts who need them.
Funded with about $12 billion, the OFCC is still helping to put up buildings
and plans to continue as long as possible.
“In the years since 1997, we’ve built or renovated about 1,100 schools, and we’ve addressed building needs in about 250 districts,” said OFCC spokesman Rick Savors. “We’ve dispersed $11 billion so far and we’ve got more, and the goal is to continue to offer funding to every school that needs it.”
Formed as a result of the Ohio Supreme Court decision on DeRolph v. State that ruled that Ohio’s method of funding public education was unconstitutional, the OFSC went to work in the late ’90s to provide matching funds to school districts to make new or updated buildings a reality.
“Out of the thousand or so buildings we’ve built, we’re still talking about 65 percent to 70 percent is new construction and about 35 percent is renovation,” Savors said. “A lot of the buildings we deal with are places with low wealth where the buildings were deteriorating so much that they needed a new building.”
Many of the OSFC projects fall under the Classroom Facilities Assistance Program (CFAP) for K-12 buildings, which includes a specific procedure that starts with the Eligibility Rankings List, developed each fiscal year by the Ohio Department of Education based on districts’ adjusted valuation per pupil.
Districts are ranked in order to determine when they can be served by the CFAP program and the proportion of project funding the district would have to cover on its own, typically from a bond levy.
“We’re still required to approach districts when their turn comes up on a listing that comes up with the ODE,” Savors said.
Then, the agency does assessments on current facilities, analyzing things like enrollment projections for up to 10 years.
“Once we have those two pieces, we can work with the district whether it would be best to renovate and expand, or to build new,” Savors said. “The district knows how it works and they know how they want to handle it.”
Savors said as long as there is still need in the state, the agency will continue, citing the ongoing issues public school districts face with competition among new community schools and funding losses.
Recent groundbreakings for schools took place as recently as January in districts in Wood, Allen and Shelby counties, and the OFCC announced another $106 million round of funding grants to new projects in late 2014 on top of another $251 million awarded last summer.
“These grants continue a historic effort by the state of Ohio to rebuild and renovate our schools,” said State Budget Director Tim Keen, chair of the OSFC, in a statement. “By ensuring the modern, efficient learning environment students need to succeed, this funding complements important educational reforms that Gov. John Kasich has helped bring to Ohio’s schools.”
The agency still operates under a “two-thirds rule,” that states that if renovations of a school building would cost more than 66 percent of what it would cost to build a new school, then the district is better off building a new school because of the safety and efficiency issues that can come with a deteriorating building.
“Their incentive is to do new construction, but it seems like it’d be much more cost-effective to modernize and renovate,” said Ohio Rep. Andy Thompson, R-Marietta.
Savors said districts can be lapsed or decline funding if the district fails to raise its local shares.
The OSFC helped Frontier Local Schools build both New Matamoras Elementary and Newport Elementary and renovate Frontier High School in the early 2000s with a total project cost of about $24.7 million.
In 2010, an $89 million project was approved at Switzerland of Ohio Local Schools to build five new district buildings and renovate the River school campus. The district approved an 8.19-mill levy to provide $35 million of the cost and the OSFC covered the rest.
In contrast, both Warren Local Schools and Marietta City Schools made attempts within the past five years to pass local bond levies to match OSFC funding for new buildings, but neither came to fruition, prompting the districts to move in other directions with restructuring and other renovation plans.