16 • The Beacon February 24 , 2022
River View announces reconfiguration options
By Josie Sellers
The River View Local School District has been reconfiguring since the 1960s , and the concept is once again being discussed at community meetings .
“ We are here to talk about the current state of our district including our buildings , enrollment and finances ,” superintendent Chuck Rinkes said during the meeting held Feb . 15 at NewPointe Community Church . “ Since 1965 we ’ ve been reconfiguring our spaces and schools . The junior high is the only building we are using now that was built for its intended purpose . All of our elementary schools weren ’ t built to be those . Even our high school was not built for what it ’ s being used for .
“ 1965 was way before the nice career center we have right down the road . River View was a compressive high school . We had a
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lot of big rooms that were reconfigured and divided when all the career-tech programs moved out of the high school building .”
River View currently has five buildings . The junior high was built in 1980 and the high school was built in 1965 . The elementary schools include Warsaw , built in 1927 , 1935 , 1958 ; Conesville , built in 1916 , 1935 and 1952 ; and Keene , built in 1914 , 1936 and 1950s .
The high school was built for 950 students but currently houses 512 students daily . Seventy of those are part-time College Credit Plus and Coshocton County Career Center students . The junior high was built for 500 and currently holds 278 seventh-graders and eighth-graders .
“ There are not as many kids at the high school as there used to be ,” Rinkes said . “ Warsaw on a daily
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Josie Sellers
The River View Local School District has been reconfiguring since the 1960s , and the concept is once again being discussed at community meetings . Superintendent Chuck Rinkes is pictured talking at the Feb . 15 meeting at NewPointe Community Church .
basis has more kids that go bell to bell than the high school .”
Warsaw has 455 students in preschool through sixth grade , Conesville has 330 in the same grade levels and Keene has 134 in kindergarten through sixth grade . Open enrollment was pulled from Keene two years ago to help with budget cuts . Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds are helping to keep Keene open , but they run out in 2024 .
With the help of school board member Evan Fischer , Rinkes also discussed
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how class sizes are not balanced throughout the district ’ s elementary buildings . If you look at just the third grade alone , Conesville has 36 students in two classes of 18 . Keene has one class of 16 . Warsaw has 61 with two classes of 21 and one of 19 .
“ This isn ’ t just a oneschool issue , though ,” Rinkes said . “ It ’ s a district issue . We want to spend more money on kids . A school district is people and programs that serve kids . Our problem is we are spending more money on our buildings . Our ESSER funds will be gone in 2024 .
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Right now we are sitting OK , but if we don ’ t make changes and face the challenges in front of us , we are going to have a problem . We have to get our footprint under control .
“ There are several rooms at the high school that we aren ’ t even using to educate kids right now . If you would have told me in 1996 that we would have even had one room open , I wouldn ’ t have believed you . Many of you in here had graduating classes of over 220 or 230 .”
This year ’ s senior class has less than 150 students , and only 129 eighth-graders will be moving over to the high school .
“ Think about our community and all the blue and white collar jobs we have lost over the years ,” Rinkes said . “ You can track Union alone with the incline and decline of Longaberger . We cannot sustain five buildings with three of them being at half capacity .”
Along with enrollment , the age of the buildings will continue to be a problem .
“ We are still in a pandemic , and Keene and Conesville have both now been closed during two different ones ,” Rinkes said . “ We are at that season just like when we went from two junior highs — one at Roscoe and one at Warsaw — that we have to have conversations about reconfiguring .”
A reconfiguration committee of 40 individuals from River View ’ s schools and the community were tasked with coming up with up to five ideas to present to the board . Chad Olinger , who was part of the committee , presented the topfour ideas to those in attendance at the meeting .
One is to build a new preschool through third grade building and move inside millage to finance . The second idea is to build a new preschool through third grade building but run a bond issue to finance . The third is to combine into one elementary school with more grade levels at the junior high and high school with modular for one grade level but not consider a new building . The fourth is to combine into one elementary and put more grade levels at the junior high and high school with modular and within five years reassess building a new elementary .
“ The youngest piece of our elementary buildings was built in 1958 ,” Rinkes said . “ The neighborhood school concept worked for River View for years . It was the best way to go because the buildings were there when the rural districts came into River View . They would have sat empty anyways , and then we had the kids to put in those building . They were
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