Parma City School District is again trying to win over voter support for a bond issue that will be on the ballot in May, meant to fund building of a new high school.
The district has held several town halls recently, including one this week with Superintendent Charles Smialek answering questions and concerns about the 4-mill bond issue. The bond issue, in tandem with almost $72 million in state funding, would help the district build a roughly $250-million high school campus on the current site of Parma Senior High School.
The district’s last three attempts to get a bond issue approved by voters have failed, including an attempt in fall 2022. Voters have approved levies and bond issues in the district just three times in roughly 20 attempts over the last two decades. The 4-mill bond issue will cost property owners an additional $11.67 per-month for every $100,000 of property they own.
The new high school would mean the district closing two other high schools and consolidating them at the Parma Senior High School campus. Smialek said that new campus would provide a significantly improved educational experience. A new pool, new labs to teach students career and technical skills, a new auditorium, and more, he said.
One concerned voter (who did not state her name) asked during the town hall why the district has not better kept up its own buildings, noting her home was built before Parma Senior High School. She also was concerned about inflation.
“With the recession we’re lucky if we can keep our homes at this point,” she said.
Smialek said the district has done a good job at keeping its buildings up and running, and noted, at least according to data the state keeps, the district is in the “minority” of school districts in Ohio by token of it not building any new buildings in recent years.
Smialek also noted that the Fair School Funding Plan has not resulted in a windfall for the district, only about an additional $300,000 per year for a district with a $135 million per-year budget. That plan was the Ohio Legislature’s attempt at creating a more equitable school funding model, roughly two decades after the Ohio Supreme Court declared the state’s school funding model unconstitutional, in part due to its over-reliance on property taxes.
Smialek said the district is currently projecting a deficit of about $6.6 million dollars as of 2026, and will likely need to seek a new operating levy (meant to fund general district operations) in the next few years.
“We will prolong our operating funds as long as possible, but the truth is, yes, at some point, we haven’t had new operating money since 2011,” he said. “At some point we will have to make an argument as to why we need more operating money.”
Smialek said during the town hall that he was hopeful voters will see the value in the bond issue. But there’s also an immediacy to the bond issue. The school district is only guaranteed about $72 million in matching Ohio Facilities Construction Commission funds through September of this year; after that, there’s no guarantee of when or how much funding the district could receive in the future to help it pay for new buildings. Smialek said the district is struggling with aging buildings with failing roofs and dated heating and cooling systems and is not eligible to receive additional funding for building projects that would just renovate its older buildings, rather than build new.
Meanwhile, trust is at a premium with Parma voters, considering former Parma City School Board of Education Vice President Amanda Karpus was charged with a felony count of forgery earlier this year (she resigned from her position soon after). Karpus has not been indicted on that charge yet, and so she has not yet had an opportunity to appear in court to offer a plea, her attorney said Thursday.
The school board’s president in 2009 was also sentenced to six years in prison in relation to a wide-ranging corruption scandal in Cuyahoga County.
