Sun staff
West Clermont Local School District officials announced plans to merge Glen Este and Amelia middle and high schools during a meeting Jan. 5, and the district will be working with Union Township trustees to sell existing property and build a new school.
The merger is an opportunity to reinvent high school and middle school education at the district, West Clermont Superintendent Dr. Keith Kline said.
“I think it’s going to give us an opportunity to give our students the opportunities they need to be successful in the future,” Kline said. “We very much appreciate the township’s cooperation and collaboration.”
District and township officials approved an agreement to work together on the project.
The agreement included establishing a Tax Increment Financing district for the properties, working with the board to rezone 79 acres at Bach-Buxton Road and Clough Pike for the new high school, hiring and paying an architect/engineer to work with the school board, and more.
A new school will be built on property located at the corner of Clough Pike and Bach-Buxton Road in the township, according to Union Township Administrator Ken Geis.
“It’s vacant land right now,” Geis said.
Geis said the township will be involved with the district on the purchase of the property, rezoning the property and selecting an architect/engineer to build the new school.
“The school district will pay for it,” Geis said about the property. “We’ve agreed to cap their exposure at $50,000 per acre.”
Amelia High School will be renovated to contain both Amelia and Glen Este middle school students, Kline said.
The Glen Este High School property will be sold to the township for $1, Geis said.
“The district is going to transfer the land they currently own to us so we can develop that and create TIFs on that,” Geis said. “We’ve agreed to participate in that project with them by directing $2 million of the TIF revenue to the district.”
There are no specific plans for the Glen Este property yet, Geis said.
“It will be re-developed into something that is a mix of commercial or residential development,” Geis said.
The new school means an opportunity to provide students with additional services, Kline said. He said the new school will feature new science labs, upgraded technology, and include more programs for students.
“One of the concerns I’ve heard is that it is going to be large,” Kline said. “My response is there are benefits to having a larger building, including more diverse programing and better balancing our class sizes.”
The district is going to look at how efficient one high school and one middle school are as opposed to two high schools and two middle schools, Kline said, however he does not anticipate that any jobs will be lost because of the change.
The new school will be built according to Ohio Facilities Construction Commission standards, Kline said.
“By doing that we’ll accumulate between $35-45 million, so when it is done we will have that in our account,” Kline said.
Those funds can then be used to build new elementary schools in the district, Kline said.
The plan is to merge the middle schools and open the new high school in the fall of 2017, according to Kline.
“The goal was to get the announcement out and get everything approved,” Kline said. “We will begin working now on plans.”
Geis said trustees wanted to be a part of the project to help the district and the community. He said trustees and district officials have been working on the project for a while.
“It’s really about community building,” Geis said. “Building the schools are a big part of community. If this is what it takes to move that project forward than certainly we wanted to be a part of it.”
For more information about the changes, visit www.westcler.org.