The most significant building in the small community or Radnor, Delaware County, will soon be gone. The stately and structurally sound school owned by Buckeye Valley Board of Education will be erased from the landscape.

Schools are deeply frightened to sell buildings as advise from Ohio School Facility Commission is to demolish all unused facilities. See, the building could become a school again but run by others – and that would apparently be bad.

I think back to what it was like in the 1920s to raise the funds to build a building of this caliper. To pull a community together, to think of the good to come for generations because of your efforts. The donation of funds, time and materials.

Only to serve less than a hundred years then be discarded. No legacy just a pile of rubble, same as a terrorist would leave it.

The school district blames the township for not taking the building. What would the township do with it anyway? A private buyer could do something with it, and would pay money to the district opposed to the district shelling money out to a demolition company.

A difference of hundreds of thousands. But alas, the school district doesn’t need money because they already have our money. And now, they use it to take our landmarks. Landmarks that would survive centuries in more evolved countries.

I hope as you all enjoy the grand opening of the new Buckeye Valley Elementary you stand there and envision your grandchildren taking a wrecking ball to it, discarding it as if it were a misguided attempt at doing good.

Aside from living a couple miles from the building I have no connection to the Radnor School but it astonishes me the lack of heritage, pride and community our throwaway society has.

— Ryan Bard

Delaware