Hamilton City School District building projects
Estimated construction costs
Elementary schools: $17 million each
Middle schools: $15 million each
Freshman School: $17 million
Hamilton High School: $54 million
Sources of funding
1999 Bond Issue: $45 million
2006 Bond Issue: $72 million
Ohio School Facilities Commission: $120 million
Elementary School open houses
Riverview Elementary (250 Knightsbridge Drive): 2 to 4 p.m. Aug. 29
Crawford Woods Elementary (2200 Hensley Ave.): 4 to 6 p.m. Aug. 31
Brookwood Elementary (1325 Stahlheber Road) 6:30 to 8 p.m. Aug. 31
Highland Elementary, (1125 Main St.) 6:30 to 8 p.m. Sept. 1
HAMILTON — Even as Hamilton High School enjoys its new 2,200-seat gymnasium — more than 600 over the old one — and wrestling rooms this year, work is already under way for the next step of the five-phase, $54 million renovation.
“In May, we started a renovation of about 200 square feet of the building that has not been upgraded,” said Jim Boerke, the district’s director of planning, operations and construction management. “We’re improving the security with a system like we have in the elementary buildings so that people will have to check in at the desk before they can go through.”
Other work include reconfiguring classrooms to get them up to current standards, adding technology to get the school up to the standards of the elementary buildings and adding a second story on two wings of the Job Development Center to add 10 new classrooms.
“The reconfiguration will make some classrooms larger as are needed for science and computer labs,” Boerke said.
The biggest change yet to come, however, will be a relocation of the cafeteria and kitchen.
“The cafeteria that we currently have is in a terrible location for getting students in and out and fed,” Boerke said. “The traffic pattern creates a bottle neck, so part of this renovation will be to convert the old gym into a cafeteria and kitchen and a hallway to the new gym.”
The new construction and renovations have completely re-vamped Hamilton’s educational system, and done so in a way that has increased the efficiency and economic viability of the district.
By moving from 13 elementary schools to eight, the district has saved the cost of administering the five extra buildings. The cost of that to the students, however, is in bigger schools, said Superintendent Janet Baker. Some of the old schools only had 300 students, while the average of the new elementary schools is a population of 650.
“That’s a more efficient way of operating, but we were able to keep the feel of a neighborhood school by using a pod concept that essentially creates smaller schools-within-schools,” she said. “Always at the forefront of our decision making was how we can best educated students as we design and build future flexibility, knowing that schools and education are rapidly changing. Our dream was to build state of the art schools at an affordable cost to deliver new and improved educational opportunities.”
She said that the planning of the schools revolved around the idea of providing equity and equality so that every student in the district has the same access to facilities and technology, no matter what part of town they lived in.
But while the buildings are virtually identical in facilities, each has been given its own character and identity by having its own color palette that allows the building to fit into its physical setting.
“We feel proud that the new schools are the center of the revitalization of our city. It reinforces our belief that strong schools make strong communities,” Baker said. “We are grateful for the vision of the Hamilton community to value education as an important community priority.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.
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