Nobody is ever happy about seeing a school cease operations but sometimes when the buildings are recycled by the community, it makes the transition a little easier.

Oak Grove Elementary School has been a community center for the public since 2007, offering a space for birthday parties, reunions and other activities. It has also been the site of Oak Grove Christian School and as of this week, Melody Hoskinson, director of Oak Grove Christian School, said the school now permanently owns the building.

“We’ve been leasing classrooms for three years and for our fourth year, we will own the building,” she said. “It will still be a school but we are hoping to expand it from pre-school through fourth grade to pre-school through eighth grade.”

The building was purchased from the Muskingum Township trustees. Hoskinson would not not say the purchase price and the amount is not yet available from the Washington County Auditor’s Office.

Hoskinson said she wishes to keep the community in the school by continuing to allow community members to rent the gym/stage area and cafeteria around school hours.

“The trustees still own the playground, the pavilion and the parking lot so we only own the building,” she said. “During the evenings and on the weekends when school is in, community members can still use the parking lot and playground.”

Hoskinson also has plans to add an additional four classrooms and an office area onto the school next summer.

“This school year we will do a lot of the planning work,” she said. “I’m so excited that the school actually owns the building. It helps the families feel more permanent and where our school isn’t a temporary arrangement anymore.”

Fundraising is something that Hoskinson said she and other staff members from the school will have to work on this year to afford the future plans they have. The school educated around 130 students from pre-school through fourth grade.

“I think our kindergarten numbers show that people want to stay with us,” said Hoskinson. “Last year our kindergarten class had 20 students and this upcoming fall, we have the same amount of 20 students.”

Before the start of the school year, Hoskinson said she hopes to have a new Oak Grove Christian School sign out front identifying that the school is there for good.

“I’m so excited to get started on all our plans we have,” she said. “I can’t begin to explain how happy I am that this building is ours now.”

Also located in the Oak Grove school is Joe Mama’s Kitchen. This business does catering, cooks lunches for the Christian school and prepares meals for the community.

“Eventually we would like to get a place for the people that eat with Joe Mama’s Kitchen somewhere to come and sit down to have their meals in the school,” said Hoskinson, whose daughter and son-in-law own and operate the eatery. “They started here when we did three years ago.”

The school site isn’t the only one in the area to get a new purpose after first closing its doors.

The former Reno Elementary School is now known as the Marietta Township Park and Recreation Center. Located through the doors of the former Marietta City Schools elementary school is Shear Class Hair Salon, Simply Breathe Yoga, Reno Lion’s Club, Choices Counseling Services, LLC, and a polarity and craniosacral therapy center.

“We rent the spaces out for activities as well,” said Dan Ritchey, Marietta Township trustee. “It’s a nice space for the community that is used a lot.”

The Marietta Township trustees have their office there as well as their meetings every month. In 2004, the Marietta Township trustees purchased the building from Marietta City Schools for $260,000.

In western Washington County, what was once Cutler Elementary School is now the Cutler Community Center. It’s been a part of the community since 2008, the same year the school closed.

The Wesley Township trustees bought the building from Warren Local Schools for $10. Now the Cutler Community Center Volunteer Group has a perpetual lease on the building for $5 a year to utilize the building for community needs.

“We have a lot there,” said Bruce Kelbaugh, volunteer director for the community center. “There’s an exercise lab, a library, a computer lab and a food pantry that caters to the townships of Wesley, Fairfield,and Decatur.”

The exercise lab is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9 to 11 a.m. and on Monday and Wednesday from 5 to 7 p.m. The computer lab and library also have the same hours.

The building is also a place for meetings for the Western Washington County Seniors and the Cutler Area Ladies. In case of an emergency, the community center in Cutler is an American Red Cross certified disaster area.

“We have Sunday dinners every third Sunday when you’ll usually find between 100 and 170 people there,” said Kelbaugh. “We are in the process of making a museum with the Heritage and Legacy group that will be called the Cutler Heritage and Legacy Center.”

The Cutler Community Center can also be rented out for only $75 a day for birthdays, reunions or any other reasons.

“We try to be there for the community and we wouldn’t be able to offer all of this without the help from our wonderful volunteers,” said Kelbaugh.

A couple other schools throughout the county have found new uses as well. According to Wesley Township Trustee David Love, the original buyers of what was formerly Bartlett School have since sold the school and work is being done to the building.

“They’ve taken down the gym floor and I believe people are living in it now,” he said. “There’s always traffic going in and out of there.”

The building was originally bought by John Church to become a place for a new industrial business site. Church did not return phone calls for comment on Thursday.

Center Elementary School in Beverly was bought by Floyd Nibert in 2008 as a residence but his family has since moved out.

“We haven’t lived there for about seven or eight years,” he said. “I don’t know what they’re doing with it now.”

Center Township trustees did not return phone calls Thursday for the status of that building.