Preserving greenspace on the Mills Lawn Elementary School property and developing a desirable facilities plan for the local schools are not mutually exclusive goals, say a group of residents calling for a portion of the Mills Lawn grounds to be set aside as a permanent community park.
The area of interest, on the western side of the nine-acre school property, is undeveloped, and the members of Preserve Mills Lawn Greenspace, which was formed last year, want to keep it that way.
The group’s effort to preserve approximately five acres at the center of town as greenspace has intensified in recent months as the Yellow Springs School district undertakes a facilities master planning process that could affect the future of local public school properties.
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Calendar year 2020 began and ended with Yellow Springs school district leaders discussing identified structural needs in the local school buildings and how to address them, but the majority of the year was occupied by the district’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Learning amid COVID
Gov. Mike DeWine was at the forefront in national responses to the novel coronavirus pandemic when in March he temporarily shuttered businesses and activities in Ohio, including all K–12 schools, to help curtail spread of the disease.
DeWine announced the school closures Thursday, March 12, effective at the end of the school day Monday, March 16, and initially set the return date for Monday, April 6. In Yellow Springs, one of those three weeks was already designated as the district’s annual spring break, and so teachers and administrators used the four days between the governor’s announcement and the shutdown to prepare two weeks worth of remote-learning and study materials. Teachers set up