Crestline BOE hears of defects in HS roof deck

Sarah Ein­se­len

Inquirer Reporter

The new Crest­line high school is still on sched­ule for a Christ­mas 2012 move-in, but a new issue is jeop­ar­diz­ing the timeline.

“The roof is kind of a prob­lem right now,” said Crest­line school board mem­ber Robert Sal­vati at the spe­cial board meet­ing held on Mon­day, Feb. 27. The roof deck has defects that have to be fixed before the actual roof is installed, he said, so the roof is on hold at the moment.

The dis­trict is await­ing a response from Sika Sar­nafil, the roof­ing man­u­fac­turer, which the board hopes will come this week so that the build­ing can stay on sched­ule. Sal­vati said he has already talked to Sar­nafil rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the com­pany has acknowl­edged that it is a prob­lem, so he and other board mem­bers expect that the com­pany will pay for replac­ing the deck and the roof­ing that’s already installed over the new cafe­te­ria and high school gym.

Work con­tin­ues inside the build­ing since the roof isn’t actu­ally leak­ing. The prob­lem is “essen­tially aes­thet­ics,” said Julie Smith, dis­trict treasurer.

About 40 per­cent of the build­ing is done, said board mem­ber Ric Cochran.

The fur­ni­ture pack­age is on sched­ule to arrive in phases, Smith said, with the first deliv­ery at the end of Novem­ber. The dis­trict will have some stone put in around the base­ball fields to clean up the area for pedes­trian traffic.

Dur­ing pub­lic com­ment, Crest­line preschool teacher and coor­di­na­tor Rosanne Con­ley exhorted the board to keep fund­ing the preschool pro­gram if at all pos­si­ble. She acknowl­edged that the pro­gram requires dis­trict funds, but “in the long run we are not a bur­den,” she said, since preschool stu­dents are more ready for kinder­garten than if they hadn’t attended preschool.

The preschool pro­gram is cur­rently funded for 32 chil­dren. It serves 78 chil­dren, 19 of which come attend for the full $75-per-month tuition price, Con­ley said. The rest attend at a reduced tuition or for free because of fam­ily finan­cial status.

Con­ley said she has tried every­thing she can think of to trim preschool expenses, say­ing that the board’s funds go only to pay salaries and ben­e­fits of teach­ers in the pro­gram, an expense that can’t be cov­ered by grant funds.

“I know it’s a lux­ury pro­gram in a way, but at the same time I don’t think it’s a lux­ury pro­gram,” she said. Only 116 Ohio school dis­tricts fund preschool programs.

Board pres­i­dent Jeff Wil­hite agreed with Con­ley and said the board wasn’t igno­rant of the value of the preschool pro­gram. “We’re try­ing every­thing we can to save that pro­gram,” he said.

The board approved an addi­tional $5,000 for the school year­book bud­get this year, which will become an elec­tive course for the first time. Board mem­bers also appoved pay­ing a $9,800 invoice from No Limit Ath­let­ics for track equip­ment. Most of that invoice was cov­ered by a dona­tion of roughly $7,000 that had been received about two months ago.

Smith reviewed three dis­trict poli­cies with the board regard­ing pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion at board meet­ings, school board con­fer­ences and pur­chas­ing pro­ce­dures. The board decided to give the board pres­i­dent the author­ity to extend speak­ing times allot­ted for pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion. It decided to con­tinue attend­ing school board con­fer­ences with­out com­pen­sa­tion, because of the school’s finan­cial state, and increased the limit of pur­chase orders to be autho­rized with­out prior author­ity to $5,000 from $1,000. That increase was based on a rec­om­men­da­tion from the Ohio School Boards Association.

The board approved Cindy Earl and Olivia Cheney as sub­sti­tute per­son­nel for the remain­der of the 2011–2012 school year. Other per­son­nel approvals were tabled until the reg­u­lar board meet­ing in March.

After all busi­ness was trans­acted, the board entered into exec­u­tive ses­sion to dis­cuss employ­ment of personnel.

The next board meet­ing will be held at 7 p.m. Mon­day, March 12, in the high school library. The pub­lic is encour­aged to attend.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Feb 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.