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Board limits administrative facility options, removes Wooster High School from consideration
Summary
After a months‑long study, district staff recommended and the board approved removing Wooster High School from consideration as the site for a consolidated central office, directing staff to pursue existing commercial properties or return to Ninth Street if nothing suitable is found.
The board directed staff to remove Wooster High School from further consideration as a primary site for a consolidated administrative headquarters and to investigate acquisition or renovation of existing commercial properties that could meet central office needs.
Chief Operating Officer Adam Cersi presented a comparative study that evaluated Ninth Street (the current district site) against the Wooster campus across four criteria: time‑to‑benefit (schedule), operational efficiency, disruption to students and staff, and fiscal stewardship. "On balance across these four criteria, we've judged the Ninth Street property to be more favorable than the Wooster property for the purposes of the AFMP across three of these four categories," Cersi said, summarizing the staff recommendation.
Cersi told trustees that a mixed approach—purchasing or renovating one or more appropriately sized commercial buildings (roughly 70,000 gross square feet for a headquarters cluster) combined with retaining some district satellite sites—appeared feasible within the CIP resources and could avoid the traffic, parking and adjacency issues identified at Wooster. The district projected a timeline of months to years for acquisition and renovation, depending on market availability, and proposed a time‑limited six‑month search window for commercial properties before returning to Ninth Street as the fallback.
Trustees praised the analysis and approved the motion (moved by Vice President Woodley, seconded by Trustee Westlake) directing the superintendent to pursue external acquisition options and return to the board for any purchase actions. The vote was unanimous.
Next steps: staff will seek available commercial properties that meet size, centrality and cost criteria, prepare a prospectus and return to the board if a viable acquisition is identified; if none are found within the investigation window, staff would return with a plan to proceed on the Ninth Street property.
