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Ringgold approves new middle school

3 min read
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Ringgold School District is embarking on more than $50 million in construction work that, when completed, will solve the district’s problems with aging buildings.

The school board last week approved plans to design a new, $42 million middle school in Carroll Township to replace a building in Finleyville that has structural problems. The board also set a public hearing next month on $9 million in new construction to solve overcrowding at Ringgold Elementary School North in Gastonville, board President Mariann Bulko said.

“We want to do it right,” Bulko said Monday. “It’s going to be very nice. We’ll have all of our schools in good condition.”

The board faced many heated meetings after the district closed old elementary schools in Donora and Monongahela in 2011, and then considered using the buildings as middle schools rather than continue to make costly repairs to the middle school in Finleyville. The Finleyville school was constructed about 1960 on pyritic soil that swells when it becomes wet and causes the building’s floor and walls to shift.

A new board was seated in 2013, and it opted to build a new middle school near the high school along Route 136 and sell the Donora and Monongahela buildings at auction.

Bulko said the board needed to approve the middle school at a special meeting Feb. 11 to meet the deadline for the project to qualify for state reimbursements. The board has yet to make decisions on all of the construction details, but did opt to include a large auditorium in the building, Bulko said.

The board also decided against relocating the administrative offices from New Eagle to the middle school.

“We can always cut things,” Bulko said. “The auditorium was the main thing of contention.”

The new middle school is expected to open during the school year beginning in the fall of 2017, she said.

The addition and renovations to the Gastonville school are expected to be completed a year earlier, and the project involves the construction of seven new classrooms and a new kitchen.

The entire building will receive a new heating and air-conditioning system, windows, flooring and ceilings.

The addition will eliminate the use of modular classrooms at the school on Finleyville-Elrama Road.

The board will hold a public hearing on the elementary school project at 6 p.m. March 9 in the Central Administration Building, 400 Main St., New Eagle. A date has yet to be scheduled for a hearing on the middle school.

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