GRD to find new location with space tight at Granville schools
Officials at Granville Exempted Village Schools know the district will grow in the decades to come with Intel’s arrival in western Licking County, but they are already starting to feel the impacts of increasing student enrollment.
Because space is limited within district buildings, the Granville Recreation District will move out of the school’s North Granger Street district office at the end of the school year to make way for the district’s facilities department.
All the shuffling is needed because the district had more kindergarten students enroll for the 2022-23 school year than anticipated. Last spring the district was projecting 146 kindergarteners for this school year but enrolled 183, setting off a chain reaction as the district quickly set up two additional classrooms.
Granville Superintendent Jeff Brown said the district created the two classrooms by transforming an outbuilding behind Granville Elementary School, which had been the home of the facilities department. For this year, the district-wide facilities department has a temporary home inside the elementary, and then it will take over the first-floor space occupied by GRD once its staff moves by June.
“Because of growth, we will be using that classroom space that they occupied this year,” Brown said of the facilities
department.
Brown said the district loves its partnership with GRD and the believe it’s advantageous to co-locate because it saves taxpayers money. “But it’s one of those times where we’re running out of space,” he said.
GRD Executive Director Andy Wildman the location has been great for the rec district but also for community members.
“When a new family moves to town, they go upstairs, they register for school, and their next stop is us,” he said.
The facilities department’s temporary home are classrooms that have previously been used as an occupational and physical therapy room for students with special needs, Brown said.
As the district starts to get a more
complete picture of its enrollment numbers for the 2023-24 school year, Brown said officials will potentially go through the process of adjusting some classroom spaces differently to accommodate the number of students.
“Some of the things that have happened in the past is some of the computer labs will go away, or spaces that are used for other purposes, will become core classroom spaces,” he said. “We’re just going to have to look at enrollment and see where we’re at in each space to better determine how we’re going to maximize classroom space availability.”
Kindergarten registration opened last week. After two days, 109 students had registered compared to 121 students in the same time frame last year, Brown said.
“(We’re) very much watching that piece of data to see what the enrollment impact is going to be at kindergarten because kindergarten will drive everything else,” he said.
By already transforming the elementary outbuilding to the classrooms, Brown said he believes the district will have enough classroom space for next year.
Wildman said GRD has been in the school’s district’s office since 2012. While GRD has not paid rent while being inside the school building, Wildman said they have contributed to capital projects, such as contributing funds toward a new HVAC system at the district office and background check machine.
The GRD had planned to move to a building at the Spring Valley Nature Preserve, Wildman said but a pipe broke over the winter and through the clean up they found asbestos.
“The pipe break clean up is more complicated than we hoped,” he said.
Wildman said as of now, they won’t know where they will move and are currently working with the Village of Granville, Granville Township and the schools to determine if there is space available. If necessary, Wildman said the office could make a home at Mcpeek Lodge.
“We kind of want to leave no stone uncovered and determine what’s the most cost effective and what makes the most sense,” he said. mdevito@gannett.com 740-607-2175
Twitter: @Mariadevito13