Belpre City Schools Superintendent Jeff Greenley speaks during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting. Greenley said the district met with the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission and visited the site of the district’s new school building for a pre-transition meeting, marking a key step in the project’s approval process. (Photo by Douglass Huxley)

BELPRE — Belpre City Schools Superintendent Jeff Greenley said at Thursday’s Board of Education meeting that officials met with representatives of the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission as they move forward in the approval process for the district’s new school building.

“It was an opportunity for them to come down, see the site, meet us and just talk about preliminary matters,” Greenley said. “A kind of a meet and greet to get acquainted with each other.”

Greenley said the group spent two hours touring portions of the old school buildings. He said it gave the district the opportunity to tell its story and to show the commission the importance of choosing the former bowling alley property by the school as the site for the new building.

“And they gave us a number of pointers and tips,” Greenley said. “So, that was a productive meeting, and I expressed to them many times how grateful we were because Belpre could never take on a job like this without them matching the funds and providing the expertise to help us get there.”

Greenley also told the board he and Treasurer Lance Erlwein would be making a trip to Chicago on Tuesday to meet with Moody’s, a global provider of credit ratings, to discuss bond financing.

“Looking forward to that trip and telling our story and hopefully getting an advantageous interest rate on those,” Greenley said.

Erlwein said they were optimistic they would get a good rate.

The pair also talked to the board about the current state of school funding, highlighting both challenges and recent developments.

“We ended very close to what we predicted in the five-year forecast,” Erlwein told the board. “The only variance was those large transfers we had to make to the tune of $2.6 million at the end of the year to avoid the pitfalls that were in the Ohio budget bill. Those items in the Ohio budget bill were ultimately vetoed by Gov. DeWine, but the House and the Senate are going to come back next week and vote to override DeWine’s overrides of the original bill.”

Erlwein also talked about uncertainty regarding the 21st Century Community Learning Centers after-school program funding, which was for $250,000, after cuts were announced from President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill”.

“It was originally approved, and now it’s on a freeze,” Lorentz said. “There’s a possibility it might come back, but otherwise we lose the Kids On Campus after-school program because they cut the money.”

Greenley said he’s been in contact with U.S. Senators Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno, who echoed these concerns.

“Both Sen. Husted and Sen. Moreno’s offices responded and said they’re working with the budget office to try to get those funds out,” he said. “But, we are not confident that those 21st Century grants will be restored.”

Despite these challenges, Greenley the district is exploring partnerships to fill the after-school gap for parents if those funds do not get restored.

“That would leave a fairly sizable gap in services for families right now that have after-school care for kids,” Greenley said. “So the Boys & Girls Club has been meeting in the church. They’ve outgrown that building, and this is a partnership agreement to go ahead and bring them in at the elementary school. This is no cost to the school district, and this is just partners coming in to help the students. So that way families have a place if they need it.”

Douglass Huxley can be reached at dhuxley@newsandsentinel.com.