Columbiana school needs a new roof - 21 News Now, More Local News for Youngstown, Ohio -

COLUMBIANA, Ohio - Columbiana voters rejected a proposed bond issue ballot following a special election last week.

Tuesday night school board members listened to their superintendent's recommendations on what to do next.

The proposed bond issue would have generated four million dollars over 29 years to refurbish Columbiana's aging South Side Middle School.

Even with voter turnout at just 24%, the issue was defeated by 536 votes.

Now the board of education must decide what to do with the school's leaky roof when there's no money to fix it.

Even though teachers accepted wage freezes last year, the district is still expected to operate in the red by the end of the coming school year especially when they can't be sure what kind of bills they will be looking at.

Superintendent Donald Mook said, "Depending upon health care increases, depending on cost of fuels, depending on increases in utilities, those are things we just don't know at this time."

But the big unknown remains to be the leaky roof on their 50-year-old middle school building.

"Unfortunately, without the roof intact we can't do a whole lot of educating kids when water is coming into the classroom. We move them from classroom to classroom as need be this past school year," Mook says.

The superintendent says the board will have to do one of four things to solve the problem. The first being just patch the roof which probably isn't cost effective since the roof is the building's original one. Second, replace the roof using general fund money which they don't have. Third, close the building all together and consolidate classes. Or fourth, put another issue on the ballot during a general election which in this case would have to be in May since they've already missed the November deadline.

A roof replacement is expected to cost around $500,000.

No date has been set for the school board to make a decision.