New Oak Harbor Intermediate School set to open in January

        After years of diligence and the school district’s widespread effort to build a new facility for its students and teachers, everything has come to fruition for the Benton-Carroll-Salem School District, which recently had a ribbon-cutting ceremony to showcase the new Oak Harbor Intermediate School.
        Students in grades 4-6 will attend the school, which is attached to R.C. Waters Elementary School — which will be home to students in grades K-3 in January after winter break.
        The district had to figure out a way to build a new school with money that had been saved for years in an effort to replace the middle school, which began serving the community in 1911 and was in constant need of repairs. District officials concluded that it made sense to build a new facility, with all of the problems the 112-year-old middle school was having.
        School board member Kim Dusseau, who was a key player in what was a very gradual process, talked about the years of focus it took to reach this point.
        “We tried to pass a bond issue (to raise funds) for the school in 2015. That failed, so we had an assessment of what it would cost to get the middle school fixed, and it was too expensive to do that,” she said. “Being a fiscally-sound board, we had started putting money away, and realized with what we had saved, we started looking into adding on to R.C. Waters.
        “We had purchased some land behind R.C. Waters. We hired an architect to do some drawings and realized we could add an intermediate school, which was cheaper than any of the repairs for the middle school. The middle school was getting to where it was not a cost-friendly place anymore,” she said.
        “(Fellow board member) Steve Rhodes and I sat on the facilities committee with (former superintendent) Guy Parmigian and (treasurer) Cajon Keeton. We just started brainstorming and the facilities committee went to some architects to see what could be done for a building housing grades 4-6, after a K-6 building that we tried to pass the bond on failed,” Dusseau said. “We realized we could do it from there. We took it to the rest of the board and brought in (architecture firm) Garmann Miller. Through numerous meetings with the facilities committee and (maintenance supervisor) Jack Harris, we got a plan together. Then you go out to different firms to get bids, and it was just a more fiscally-sound thing to do instead of passing a levy. It took a good 10 years of trying to come up with different ideas. It was just coming up with the best plan that was good for students, the school district and the community.
        “It took a lot of planning to get to where we are,” she said.
        Garmann Miller broke ground in June 2022, taking 19 months to build the nearly $14 million facility, which is 50,000 square feet.
        In 2015, a 4.4-mill property tax bond issue that Dusseau alluded to was defeated at the ballot box that would’ve raised enough money for the district to build a K-6 building next to the high school and just north of R.W. Minick Medical Center.
        Keeton talked about the district tightening its belt in an effort to save money for building a new school.
        “Because of COVID, we received federal dollars, which every school got. We didn’t hire any new staff in order to offset current expenses,” said Keeton, who also noted that the school’s use of a capital projects fund allowed it to raise money. “The governor gave schools student-wellness dollars, and most of it was saved for the new building. And we also had some years with a (budget) surplus. When voters said no in 2015, we had to do a smaller project, and that’s where we came up with the idea for a school for grades 4-6.”
        “We didn’t have to go to taxpayers for additional money,” said the Superintendent Cathy Bergman. “We were prudent with the taxpayers’ money, and we’ll have to continue to be.”         
        Unfortunately, the district will have to deal with another devaluation of Davis-Besse yet again, which will hurt the its ability to collect tax dollars from the nuclear power plant.
        “Davis-Besse is going to be devalued again, which is a little disheartening because we were on a high,” said Bergman. “We have to go to Columbus and hopefully recoup some of that money.”
        Keeton has had to do this before in the past, and he knows it will be a tremendous challenge.
        “It’s been a rollercoaster,” he said. “We’ll have to weather the storm and work with the state.”