Johnstown-Monroe Local School District

Superintendent’s Message

Dale L. Dickson

 November 7, 2018

                 I extend my sincere thanks to the good citizens of the Johnstown-Monroe Local School District for supporting our schools with the passage of the Emergency Levy Renewal.  Your support means that the school district will continue to receive the existing $2.2 million annually in operational revenue that is used to provide supplies, materials, utilities, transportation, salaries and a variety of other costs incurred by our school district.  The Board of Education, administration and staff strive to be good stewards of the local, state and federal tax dollars received while working hard to provide improved educational opportunities and safe facilities for our children.  Together, with parents and other business/community members, we will continue these efforts.

                Facility construction wise we are in the final days of renovation work being conducted at our Middle School.  We have a bit more work to complete on the newly installed elevator and the safety vestibule before opening up our new entrance for use within the next few weeks.  It was so good to see our students enjoying lunch in their newly renovated cafeteria on October 29^th.  And it is equally enjoyable to see the students gracing the classrooms that have been completed and so well prepared by the teachers.  A special word of thanks goes to Barbara Derenburger and board member Ruth Ann Booher for their time and effort in adding special artistic design features to the Middle School and PAC interior.

                With respect to the new Elementary and High School Facilities we are addressing final punch list items with the architect, contractor and Ohio School Facilities Commission prior to closing out these projects.

                Having lost our stadium facility to fire on December 10^th of 2017 we have been extremely challenged, given all of the other facility initiatives in the district, to work through the process of: settling the insurance claim for the loss, designing an adequate facility for today’s co-curricular and extracurricular programs, engineer, bid, budget and seek donations for a new facility that will serve many generations to come.  We realize that we only have one chance to get this right and we are doing our best to provide a quality facility that brings great value to the school district and community.  We are expecting to have board action very soon on a Guaranteed Maximum Price proposal from the contractor.  Once that GMP is approved we will be ready to get a shovel in the ground to construct our new facility which is expected to be a six-month project.  We continue to seek donations for this stadium facility project and are grateful to the Park National Bank for offering to match dollar for dollar all donations up to $25,000 for the project.  If you are interested in donating to this effort please contact our district office at 740-967-6846.

                 Our site improvement project for the area just north of the football stadium is underway and will involve considerable excavation to make the grounds more conducive for use including the construction of a new softball field.  Our old softball field was located where our new high school now sits and the district has been seeking an alternative location for the softball field since it was displaced.  As other locations were ruled out the board settled on the area just north of our stadium.  The new softball field will be completed in the next few months and we are hopeful that it will be established enough for use sometime during the 2019 season.  We thank the Johnstown Youth Athletic Association for their partnership in allowing us to use Chambers Field for our softball games while we have worked to establish a new field in the district.

                The Adams Middle School and Oregon Elementary buildings have been razed and work will continue in the coming weeks to complete debris removal and final excavation.  This 15-acre site will continue to be used as green space for our athletic programs and could be considered as a future school building site should growth in our district dictate the need.

                A site improvement project, impacting the south, east and north sides of our Middle School, Performing Arts Center and Education Center will commence in June of 2019.  This project will include renovation to our sidewalks, creation of a bus lane on the south side of the Middle School, new lot lighting, improved drainage and the repaving of the parking lots.   We have endured the pot holes, standing water and lack of lighting for years and we look forward to making these improvements to create a site that is safe and smooth for all to use.

                A special thanks goes out to Johnstown Elementary School for hosting a wonderful Grandparents Day on October 18^th.  It was quite an undertaking to prepare for over 1,200 grandparents to visit their grandchildren in school that day and we thank Principal Marcie Wilson, Principal Janet Smith and the entire staff for their excellent job organizing the event.

                Congratulations to all of our fall athletic teams, band, cheerleaders and trainers for a very successful season.  We are very proud of the efforts of our students at all levels and the fact that 90% of our high school students participate in extra-curricular/co-curricular activities.  Our football Johnnies continue their post season tournament play in Maysville on Saturday night where they will take on Belair High School.  Go Johnnies!!!