PEDRO – Rock Hill School District officials have moved one step closer to constructing their new elementary and high schools.

Wednesday, February 16, 2000

PEDRO – Rock Hill School District officials have moved one step closer to constructing their new elementary and high schools.

An access road beside the high school site – about 0.51 miles of Township Road 169, which extends from County Road 26 to Ohio 93 – was upgraded to a county road at the Thursday Lawrence County commissioners’ meeting.

"We’re going to do some work on the road," said Lloyd Evans, superintendent. "And the county has their own salt trucks, so they are able to maintain a road a little bit better and quicker. It will make it safer."

The road also will undergo some improvements, Evans added.

"The road is going to be widened from 18 feet to 24 feet," Evans said.

This will be one of two entrances to the high school site, which will offer a way into the school’s student and bus parking, he said.

Other than the road acquisition, the new schools construction project has been rather uneventful during the cold winter months.

Board officials are looking forward to letting the site work out for bids soon, Evans added.

"We’ll put out the bids Feb. 22," he said. "It will probably be within 30 days that they are awarded and we should start construction before the first of April."

Site work will include clearing about 18 acres of wooded area on the elementary school site and grading both sites, Evans said.

The new schools should be open for enrollment by the fall of 2001, he added.

"Bids for the high school will be awarded a month prior to the elementary," Evans said. "But the construction will go on simultaneously. Completion date is expected to be the same."

The remodeling of the high school for its transformation into a middle school is presently scheduled to begin after the new schools are completed, but that could change, Evans aid.

"We’re looking at backing that up and trying to have the remodeling work done at the same time the new high school is completed," he said.

The two new schools and one renovated building were made possible by a 4.28-mill property tax levy voters approved in May 1998. The levy supplies about $3.8 million of the total project cost. The rest of the nearly $40 million school project is paid for by state building assistance funds approved by the Ohio Schools Facilities Commission.