Last month, Nordonia Hills City Schools received a 5-star ranking from the state of Ohio, putting us in the top 10% in the state. We’ve won elite awards from the state auditor for excellent fiscal management. I’ve witnessed community pride as residents unite behind the schools for graduation parades and championship games.
Nordonia, highly ranked and respected, maintains this level of excellence while also being among the lowest funded districts with some of the oldest buildings in Summit County. I’ve watched in recent years as my neighbors with young children choose to move to Brecksville-Broadview Heights (ranked minimally higher) and Revere (ranked minimally lower). They are able to attract and retain taxpaying families by showing investment in their schools; both have built new schools in the last 3 years. As the daughter of a realtor, I know “as go the schools, so goes the community.”
No one disagrees that Nordonia’s aged schools are in poor condition. Engineers from the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission surveyed the buildings. It was their expert recommendation to replace each building, because the cost of patching them up is more than two-thirds of the cost to replace them altogether. In 2019, their estimate was $118.7 million to renovate the buildings. The pandemic then disrupted plans across the globe, and in 2021 that figure was revised to $137.7 million to renovate and $158.5 million to build new. Prices only increase the longer we wait.
25 years ago, Nordonia had a chance to reshape its landscape through new construction. I think back to the opportunity voters had, and how they made the choice to defer to the future. I look around this community and wonder, “What would we look like had we built new schools back then?”
Now we have another chance. We can make sacrifices in the short-term that promise to deliver rewards over the long-term—for our students, for our property values, and for the towns that we want to see continue to grow and prosper. Where do you want to see Nordonia in 25 years? When the community unites behind its schools, we all win.
Dawn Sedor
