LORAIN — Outraged about a potential plan to replace Admiral King and Southview with one new high school, about 60 parents turned out to protest at a School Facilities Review Committee meeting Wednesday night.

The committee was set up by the Lorain Board of Education to research how best to use $133 million in Ohio Schools Facilities Commission funding.

Most members of the crowd, which was largely white, railed against the idea of one school, which the state proposed because of declining enrollment in Lorain Schools.

However, Dan DeNicola, the schools’ chief operations officer, has said the district is not locked into the proposal.

“We’re going to lose teachers out of this if we go to one high school. We’re going to lose nurses,” resident Terry Milam told a committee researching how to use the money.

High school student James See said his classmates would be likely to riot if teens from opposite sides of the city were  to learn inside the same walls.

“If you combine East Side gangs and West Side gangs, bad things are going to happen,” he said. “Somebody will get killed.”

Parent Lidubina Ortiz said she also worries about gang problems.

“If there is a way, I probably won’t send my children to that school,” she said. “We need to think about the safety of our children before money.”

Some parents have already enrolled their children in other school districts because of speculation over a one high school system in Lorain, City Councilman Greg Holcomb said.

The review committee made no decisions Wednesday about keeping two high schools or building one enormous building.

But its members did vote unanimously to tell the board of education it should build a newer, larger facility to replace Whittier Middle School and also demolish several vacant school buildings.

Those empty schools include Larkmoor, Emerson, Homewood, Lorain Middle School and Meister Road School, DeNicola said.

If the school board goes ahead with the plan, demolition will cost about $9 million, leaving the district with $124 million in state funds to construct new buildings, Board President Jim Smith said.

Smith told the concerned parents he hasn’t made up his mind about how many high schools the city should have. But attendance is falling — by nearly 3,000 students in the past four years — and that problem isn’t going away, he said.

Every Lorain public school student who chooses to go to a community school or enroll in another city takes away state funding, Smith said. That means the Lorain Schools lose state funding, which is why board members have to think about closing schools.

The review committee plans to meet every two weeks at 6 p.m. The next meeting will be June 18 at the Charleston Administration building on Pole Avenue. The meetings are open to the public.

Contact Jason Hawk at 329-7148 or jhawk@chroniclet.com.

 

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