New High School Set To Open 2027-28
By EMILY CANNING-DEAN
Special To MedinaCountyLIVE.com
BRUNSWICK – While Brunswick City School district officials believe the new high school campus under construction on Center Road will benefit students and staff, they also view it as an investment the entire community can be proud of.
“This facility doesn’t just belong to the schools,” Board of Education President Mary Weinhauer said. “It belongs to the entire community.”
This facility doesn’t just belong to the schools…it belongs to the entire community.”
So far construction on this high school building, which is slated to be 302,000 square feet complete with a 1,000-seat auditorium and 2,000-seat competition gymnasium, is on schedule. The building is set to be open to students at the beginning of the 2027-28 school year.
Weinhauer said overseeing the project has become like a second full-time job for Superintendent Jason Niedermeyer and Treasurer Mark Pepara, but added that plans for the project have included input from many different stakeholders in the community.
“Recently I was in Jason’s office and he had three different samples of possible seats for the gym in there on display,” she said. “Staff, students and members of the community have been in there to offer their input. To make sure this building will be well-equipped, we made sure to get input from the true experts – the staff who work with students every day. We have two fantastic physics teachers who collaborate often with their separate classes, but they pointed out that their classrooms were nowhere near each other. That was one of the modifications we made to the design.”
Brunswick School District Budget Updates
Treasurer Pepara explained that this $102 million project is the completion of the master facilities plan the district had created years ago. “One of the most notable improvements prior to the high school project was the construction of our new middle school several years ago,” Pepara said. “With that project we also received a good portion of funding from the state.”
Early in 2022, the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission informed the district about an opportunity to receive state funding that would cover 39 percent or $42.6 million of the cost of the high school construction. The OFCC stated that Brunswick’s current high school needs extensive repairs, but the cost of renovating and upgrading the building exceeded 66 percent of the cost of constructing a new facility, so the OFCC would only provide funding for new construction.
Niedermeyer said the current building doesn’t work well for 21st century learning. “Our existing building is a quarter mile long,” he said. “The east portion of the building was constructed in the 1950s and then there was an addition to the west and then areas built in the center to connect everything.
Voters Approve Bond Issue May 2023
When the OFCC approached the school district with the offer to pay for 39 percent of the project, Niedermeyer said the district had 13 months to secure a commitment from taxpayers to fund the rest of the project.
In August of 2022 the board of education voted in favor of pursuing a ballot issue to help fund the project, but voters initially rejected the issue when it was presented in November of 2022.
“I think there were a number of factors that caused this,” Niedermeyer said. “Inflation had started to run rampant in the local economy. Everybody’s property taxes were going up. Also, we had just learned about this opportunity in the spring of 2022, so we really didn’t have a lot of time to get in front of the community and explain the process.”
But by May of 2023, voters approved the bond issue. Meghan Woolard of the group Brunswick for Excellence, which led the campaign for the bond issue, said the 36-year bond issue will cost property owners roughly $18 per month per $100,000 of property value.
“I give a lot of credit to our voters here in Brunswick. I think they looked at things logically…”
“I think we were able to get the point across that if we didn’t approve the bond issue that we would lose out on more than $42 million in state funds to help with the construction of the project,” Woolard said. “Even if this wasn’t approved, we would need a new high school in the near future, but we would miss out on those funds if we waited.” Woolard said Brunswick for Excellence members visited district PTO meetings, passed out information at athletic events and got the word out on social media.
“I give a lot of credit to our voters here in Brunswick,” Niedermeyer said. “I think they looked at things logically and realized that with this offer from the OFCC we would be having our tax dollars come back into our community with this project.”
Education And Maintenance Buildings, Tennis Courts, Baseball Field
“This new high school building will actually be a little smaller than our current high school, but the building will have a much better flow,” Pepara said.
“… I think it will reshape not only the district, but the entire community.”
Niedermeyer explained that instead of a quarter-mile long single story building, the new Brunswick High School complex would largely be two stories with ninth and 10th grade classrooms on the first floor and 11th and 12th grade classrooms on the second floor.
“With our current building, it can be a challenge to get from one of the academic wings to the other,” Niedermeyer said. “Let’s say you have a ninth grader who excels at math, so they are taking a higher-level course. They might have to try to travel a quarter mile in four minutes to get to their next class. With the intentional stacking of this new building, that won’t be such a challenge.”
Pepara said the new campus will include not only the new high school building, but a new maintenance facility, board of education office, a multipurpose field with synthetic turf, tennis courts and a full-size baseball field. Also funded through the bond issue were additional classrooms and site safety improvements at Applewood and Kidder Elementary Schools.
“We are very excited about the future,” Pepara said. “This has been a big undertaking for the district, but I think it will reshape not only the district, but the entire community.”
Timeline For Brunswick High School Complex Openings
By EMILY CANNING-DEAN
Special To MedinaCountyLIVE.com
While the main high school building on the Center Road campus is expected to be complete and operational by the beginning of the 2027-28 school year, some of the smaller structures are slated to be finished before the opening of the high school.
“Site improvements at both Applewood and Kidder Elementary schools, which is also part of this project, have already been completed,” Treasurer Mark Pepara said. “These were relatively small projects that we were able to complete quickly.”
Pepara said additions to each of these elementary buildings will make room for new classrooms. Both additions are scheduled to be completed before the 2026-27 school year.
Talk LIVE: Niedermeyer talks on new Brunswick High School complex
AUDIO FEATURE:
Jason Niedermeyer / Emily Canning-Dean
Talk LIVE is an audio feature of the Medina County Time Capsule:
