OSWEGO – The Oswego City School District is moving ahead with plans to relocate its Central Offices.
The district looks to move out of the Education Center on East First Street and into the northeast part of Frederick Leighton Elementary School. As part of the move, renovations are also under way for Oswego High School, across the street from Leighton. The technology department will be housed there.
Superintendent Dr. Dean Goewey expects the move to take place sometime in last August.
The Education Center has been the district’s home since 1992. It has been on the market for several years. Recently, the possibility of a purchaser has increased.
The Ed Center has exhausted its usefulness for the district, Dr. Goewey said.
Earlier this year, he said the district has had two or three very serious inquiries; “Two or three potential developers have toured the building more than once,” he added.
Any offer the district receives for the site must be approved by the board.
“We can’t move technology into Oswego High School yet,” Dr. Goewey said at this week’s board of education meeting. “But we did receive a letter from State Education Department saying, ‘Please be patient. We know you’ve had a request in for quite some time.’ It’s been six months.”
The district’s capital projects are multi-year projects, he pointed out.
The relocation project went out to bid and a contractor was selected. Work started recently on relocating the Administrative Offices.
The next phase will be the construction of the security walls and doors to prevent visitors to the school from accessing the district offices, the superintendent said.
They will seek bids for movers.
“We are pretty pleased with the prices we’re getting,” Dr. Goewey said. “The problem is this is a really busy time for moving and they’d like to know a specific date, which is still up in the air right now.”
The movers will only handle the larger items. The rest will be moved in-house.
They are very hopeful that they will move the Administrative Offices from the Education Center to the new central office space in Leighton soon.
It’s undetermined where the off-site detention center will be relocated. Currently it is next door to the board room in the Education Center.
“It’s not ideal to have that housed in the high school. So we’re not sure exactly where it’s going to be. But it’s going to be in one of our seven buildings,” the superintendent said. “Or, there is also the opportunity for us perhaps use some public space, like in the library. We worry about supervision. It’s nice to have an administrator in close proximity.”
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I believe it would be ‘ideal’ to move the elementary totally away from the High School, even though Leighton School has a lot of great memories for a lot of students and faculty. I remember my child asking about some of the behaviors of the older students right outside her classroom in third or fourth grade. Also the earlier dismissal time made it possible for recreational activities of the older students to influence the younger kids who of course, thought they were cool smoking and as the Brits say, ‘snogging’ right across from the playground areas. Whoever planned this site, didn’t think about the future more ‘edgy’ YAs.
Too bad the school district wasn’t able to purchase properties close to Leighton so that bussed students from the Fruit Valley area don’t have an even further commute, but obviously, that wasn’t seen as in the budget at the time.
Now, we probably CAN redistrict, but not with a popular vote because of the longer commute times for elementary students. Another solution???
From a different perspective many high school students help at Fls, earning credits and helping children. There are always a few high school students that set a bad example but smoking is not allowed on school property and the Fls children can’t see any inappropriate behaviors from classroom or playground. I was a strong advocate for saving Fls and moving Ed Center in. We can’t let some of our most challenged families have their children going out of the neighborhood to school.
Wrong letter pushed