By G. SAM PIATT

PDT Staff Writer

WEST PORTSMOUTH — Officials from the Washington-Nile Local School District broke ground Tuesday morning at the spot where the district’s $15 million middle school will go up.

The district’s entire student body of about 1,600 and staff members filed into the high school football stadium for the program, which included speakers and music and song by school bands and choral groups.

Students from Portsmouth West Elementary School led the audience in singing the school fight song.

Then they followed Middle School Principal Christopher Jordan and all trekked to an open field just west of the stadium. There, heavy equipment of Boone Coleman Construction Co. stood by as officials did their ceremonial dig with short-handled shovels.

The Portsmouth West Middle School, expected to be ready for students in 2011, will house grades five through eight. It will have about 520 students and a staff of 45 to 50, said district Superintendent Pat Ciraso.

About 370 West students in grades six through eight presently attend classes in the old Portsmouth West High School on Washington Boulevard. That building, which opened in 1969, is apparently going to be torn down once the new middle school opens its doors.

The fifth-grade students are now in classes at the elementary school. The new middle school is to have a wing for the fifth and sixth grades and a wing for seventh and eighth grades.

The “new” Portsmouth West High School and the nearby elementary school opened for classes in the 1998-99 school year. The new middle school will be located south of and between those two buildings.

In her remarks from the makeshift stage set up on the running track, Ciraso shared the good news that the Ohio School Facilities Commission will pay 98 percent of the approximate $15 million cost for the middle school.

“This will give you the complete education system,” said Stacy Thomas of the commission.

State Rep. Todd Book, D-McDermott, a 1986 graduate of Portsmouth West High School, called it an “important day for the community,” which he said he knew was understandably “very proud” of what it has accomplished for the future of its children.

“This is a good place to come from and a good place to live,” he said.

The man who was superintendent of the school district from 1960 to 1982, Eugene McKenzie, was also on the stage.

“We were in a kind of a hotbed when I began,” said McKenzie. “We were over $100,000 in debt, but we slowly came out of it. The people passed a levy and the district kept moving ahead.”

He was paid $37,000 as superintendent when he retired in 1982. His wife died in 1997 and he now lives at the Hill View Retirement Center.

As he left the stage to go to the groundbreaking, Kay Reiser Gibson, a teacher at the high school, came by to thank Mr. McKenzie for his treatment of her as a student and for later hiring her.

Once when she was in detention, she told him, “You felt sorry for me and bought me a bottle of pop.”

Others offering brief remarks Tuesday included Mark Tanner, architect with Tanner, Stone, Holsinger, Donges of Portsmouth; Herbert Reihner, construction manager; and Craig Hazlebaker, president of the Washington-Nile Board of Education.

G. SAM PIATT can be reached at (740) 353-3101, ext. 236.