The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
A class act
Students in home-renovation courses playing key role in house-flipping project
Perry School District has chosen the ideal place to conduct a high school course on home renovation.
The district bought a house in Perry Township which is serving as a realworld classroom where students have been learning about upgrading a house by being part of the work crew.
Perry High School students from two separate home-renovation classes gather each day at a vacant house on Utah Court. The house, built in 1964 and purchased by the district in 2019, has provided students with a place to receive hands-on experience in various aspects of home construction and improvements.
“It’s very different than what I’m used to teaching in a high-school shop type of setting,” said Ryan Zusy, a science, technology, engineering and mathematics teacher who instructs both classes. “It’s like my first year of teaching all over again.”
But Zusy isn’t the only adult in the house to share some of the finer points of home construction and remodeling with students.
Grant funding secured by Perry Schools pays for professional contractors to come in and guide students while they work. Those contractors also take the lead in performing some of the more intricate tasks that are part of the endeavor.
“With rough electricity and rough plumbing, it’s easier to have the kids trying it out,” Zusy said. “When you get to something like finished electricity, you definitely want to make sure the fixtures are hooked up correctly and the panel is done correctly, so there are things professionals are still in there doing.
“But the kids are watching and observing and helping out.”
Perry Schools purchased the A-frame home for $89,500 in August 2019. Later that same month, students in Zusy’s home-renovation classes began working on what was expected to be a “house flipping” project spanning two academic years.
Once the home is totally renovated, the district plans to sell the house and recoup at least its original expenditure. Any sales proceeds above $89,500 would be earmarked to help buy another project house.
Going into the project, the house at 4330 Utah Court had no major structural issues, “but it was definitely dated,” Zusy said.
“There was paneling all over the place,” he said. “Definitely a 1970s/’80s type of woodwork in it.”
Students have handled duties at the house such as demolition, installation of windows and doors, and hanging drywall in the garage.
They’ve also worked in conjunction with professional contractors on jobs involving plumbing; heating, ventilation and air conditioning; electrical systems; and pouring and finishing
concrete.
Zusy said the original plan was to have the house totally upgraded and ready for sale by the end of the current school year. But the project fell behind when all Ohio schools were closed for in-person instruction because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“So we’ve stretched (the completion date) out another year (to spring of 2022),” he said.
On May 11, news media outlets were invited to the morning and afternoon home-renovation classes to check out the progress that students are making on the project.
Perry High School sophomores Ryan Budziak and
Kyle Coursen, members of the afternoon class, were installing soffits — a type of finished covering — to the underside of a roof overhang on the house. They did not need to work on ladders or scaffolding, since the base of the A-frame home’s roof was only about 3 feet above the ground.
Ryan said it’s been a blessing to be able to take a home-renovation class that’s based in an actual house.
“I’ve really enjoyed being able to learn how to do stuff, that typically not many people know how to do,” Ryan said. “Like earlier in the semester, we did electrical and plumbing, and that’s something I thought
I’d never know how to do, and it actually became really easy once you learned it.”
Kyle said working on the house has helped instill him with greater self-confidence.
“Because you’ve just got to trust yourself and if you mess up, it’s life, everybody makes mistakes, but you learn it and you just continue,” he said.
While Perry Schools spent money from its regular budget to buy the home on Utah Court, funds to use the house for a studentlearning experience came from an Enrichment Opportunities for Every Child Grant from the Ohio Department of Education.
“Any teacher training, any student training, paying for trades to come into the house itself and shadow students and show them the way of the trades and to actually teach, we can actually pay for that through this grant,” said Perry Schools Assistant Superintendent Betty Jo Malchesky. “And the actual supplies to build or renovate the home was 100 percent from the grant, not from any Perry Schools general revenue.”
Malchesky said purchasing the house to serve a home-renovation class is an example of Perry Schools’ commitment to provide students with real-world experiences so they get a sample of future careers. The district also will continue to aggressively seek grants that can create more student opportunities.
“We’re chasing after those grants all the time,” she said.