ONTARIO, Ohio — Ontario Local Schools is going to get a new weight room facility.
The Ontario school board approved a resolution Tuesday night during its regular meeting, allowing this project to move forward.
The Ontario Athletic Boosters is financing the project through cash on hand and from bank loans.
Dave Rehfeldt, booster club president and school board member, discussed some of the details of this project.
He said that two years ago Chris Miller, the high school athletic director/assistant principal, expressed interest in enhancing the athletic facilities at Ontario, identifying the weight room as in need of improvement.
“He set out on a pretty aggressive plan to identify what we needed and through that the booster club immediately endorsed his plan and said, ‘What can we do to help,'” Rehfeldt said.
After holding several meetings with members of the community and the athletic department, the booster club came up with a plan to revamp the sports facility by the football field, which would cost between $2.5 and $3 million, Rehfeldt said.
“As we started to develop that [plan], we kind of got the feeling that trying to raise $2.5 million is going to be a little bit of a stretch at the present time, and rather than delay the entire plan until we could get it figured out, Chris Miller, [High School Principal] Chris Smith and I sat down and said, ‘We need to get going on the weight room now,'” Rehfeldt said.
He continued, “During the past two years, the finances of the booster club have improved by about 100 percent, and we are comfortable entering into a 10-year loan to build a weight room. We have verbal commitments from banks already on the project. We have two contractors submitting bids for the presentation.”
The new weight room is going to be housed in the existing wrestling room adjacent to the high school gymnasium. A new 3,200 square foot wrestling area will be added onto the back of that facility.
“We are comfortable putting together that weight room and getting started immediately,” Rehfeldt said.
He noted, “It is not the intent of the booster club to a) not be able to continue to support the athletic department, and we will not take 100 percent of our finances out of the booster club to pay for this facility…The agreement that we’re hoping to do with the school board is to have the school board pay for the operating costs of the facility. The booster club will obviously pay for the capital cost, including the weight room equipment.”
He said the weight room should be completed by the beginning of the next school year.
He added that the booster club intends to hopefully move forward with revamping the sports facility by the football field in the future, adding, “but right now we think it’s more important to move forward with phase one than to not do anything.”
Board member Jerod Them stated, “This is something that’s been needed since I was here in the mid-90s…It’s long overdue.”
“This is fantastic that the boosters would take on a project like this,” said Board member Tom Beck.
PARCC results
In her report, Director of Education Kathy Stone discussed the district’s PARCC test results.
She started by saying, “This is preliminary.
“The test results came to me in a spread sheet that was 734 pages long…We narrowed it down by grade level and the good news is we were able to meet all 22 achievement indicators.”
She continued, “Areas that we were 20-plus percentage points above the state were fourth grade ELA–about 90 percent of our students were proficient–algebra one, geometry and physical science. Areas that we’re going to work on are science and mathematics.”
She said she’s pleased with the PARCC test results, noting, “That will be one of the indicators on the grade card.”
Ontario Growth Association
Members of the Ontario Growth Association presented the district with a $1,000 donation to go toward the auditorium wall art project.
Superintendent Lisa Carmichael expressed her appreciation for the donation, saying, “We wanted to beautify that area for a long time.”
