KETTERING OKS SCHOOL GROWTH
Residential property rezoned for adult transition program.
KETTERING - The city of Kettering approved the school district’s request this week to rezone property on Lincoln Park Boulevard to accommodate the growth of a special education program for students at Fairmont High School.
This week, the Kettering Planning Commission approved the district’s petition to have the property at 273 Lincoln Park Blvd. changed from “residential” to “conditional use.” The district purchased the house on the property in December for $200,000 and will be renovating it to be used for its Transition Services Program.
Ken Lackey, the school district’s director of business services, explained that the transition program is for students who have completed their credit requirements at Fairmont, but remain with the district until their 22 birth- day, learning job and life skills.
“The Adult Transition Program will be housed in the property,” Lackey said. “These are students who are handicapped students who have completed four -year requirements at high school and our staying with us. The program teaches them life skills and helps them get ready to use realworld skills they need and they also continue to take classes and they learn to use public transportation and cooking and cleaning. Those kinds of things.”
The program, which has two teachers and two aides and 10 students per teacher, has been in the Barnes building, but the district is moving its administrative offices and other programs out of the historic building on Far Hills Avenue this year and into space near Fraze Pavilion.
That necessitated the need for the transition program to find a new home and the property on Lincoln Boulevard, right by the high school, presented an excellent opportunity.
“This space really helps set them up for a real environment for them to get ready to live in actual real world situations and to be in a home so we can teach them behavioral things on their own living and take care of themselves and take care of the space they live in,” Lackey said.
Several residents were concerned about the rezoning of the property, wanting assurances that it would not be a residential program coming to the neighborhood.
“It is a school day program and is definitely nota residential program,” Lackey said. “For us to run a program like this we needed the property zoned for conditional use of a residential property.”
Design renovations are underway and the district expects to have the facility ready for the upcoming school year.
“We are going todo some interior renovations and convert the garage into more of a classroom type of space,” Lackey said. “Also, alter some of the other interior areas so the space is ADA complaint. The home though on the outside will look basically exactly the way it does today when we are completed with renovations.”