LIBERTY CENTER SCHOOLS MAKE DECISION

The site for the district’s pro­posed new pre-kindergarten through grade 12 school was approved Mon­day dur­ing a spe­cial meet­ing of the Lib­erty Cen­ter Local Board of Edu­ca­tion. Now, it goes before the vot­ers.

The board decided that the new school will be built on site, although they didn’t take a for­mal vote on it.

While the off-site option was elim­i­nated, board mem­bers did not rule out the pos­si­bil­ity of build­ing the new school west of the cur­rent facil­i­ties, sim­i­lar to a pro­posal made last month by for­mer board mem­ber Daniel Cham­bers.

The board recently asked its archi­tec­tural firm to pro­vide infor­ma­tion about the fea­si­bil­ity of elim­i­nat­ing or min­i­miz­ing the esti­mated $500,000 cost of swing space to hold classes dur­ing the con­struc­tion process.

The new school is esti­mated to have an area of about 151,000 square feet and cost nearly $37 mil­lion. The Ohio Facil­i­ties Con­struc­tion Com­mis­sion will pay for 64 per­cent of the total cost.