A number of trees were felled on the campus of McKinney and YS High schools last week ahead of planned construction for the district’s facilities upgrade project. Following concern from local citizens about the removal of memorial trees on the campus, YS Schools penned a press release detailing the district’s plans to replace the trees in cooperation with the YS Tree Committee. (Photo by Reilly Dixon)
Schools respond to tree concerns
- Published: October 19, 2024
Those traveling on East Enon Road in the last week will have noticed some changes to the landscape at McKinney Middle and YS High schools: A number of modular buildings have been delivered to the edge of the campus, and many trees previously on the property have been removed.
Both changes are in anticipation of the planned renovation and new construction set to take place at the middle and high schools, with groundbreaking planned for January 2025.
Though the loss of trees on the property was planned as part of the facilities upgrade project, local residents expressed dismay on social media last week — particularly over the loss of memorial trees on the grounds. Those trees were planted by the YS Tree Committee over the last several decades in memory of former students and staff members who have died.
In response to the community’s concern over the trees, the school district issued a press release Thursday, Oct. 3, detailing the schools’ plans for replacing the trees in the future.
According to the press release, YS Schools has partnered with the YS Tree Committee “over the last few months to identify, document and map all memorial trees.” The release went on to state that the district intends to “plant more trees than are being removed” and “honor the legacy of our community’s memorial trees by updating and replacing memorial plaques at the project’s completion.”
The plan for replacing the trees includes those that were cut down to make way for construction, as well as memorial trees that died but “were not previously replaced.”
A Facebook post on the YS Tree Committee’s page released the same day as the district’s press release reiterated that the local nonprofit organization is working in tandem with the district.
“Rest assured that every tribute tree taken down will be replaced once the construction project has been completed,” the post read.
“I want the village to know that we have been working on this since May, and we didn’t make the decision to cut down the trees haphazardly,” McKinney and YSHS Principal Jack Hatert told the News this week.
He added that the district had a narrow window of time during which the trees could be removed ahead of the facilities upgrade project’s groundbreaking due to the campus presence of a protected animal species.
“We only had from Oct. 1 to Oct. 15 to get the trees down because of the Indiana bat,” Hatert said.
Indiana bats are protected at both the state and federal levels, so the removals of their potential habitats are highly regulated: Tree removal is prohibited during bats’ roosting and maternity season, from April 1 to Sept. 30. And though the permitted tree removal period in Ohio generally runs from Oct. 1–March 31, trees known to host bats are often protected during the bats’ hibernation period, which begins in mid-October.
In the meantime, until the trees are replaced, a YS High School journalism class headed by teacher Josh Mabra is working on a memorial tree project, which aims to use parts of the removed trees to create keepsakes. The YS Tree Committee is also working with the facilities upgrades project’s construction manager, Conger Construction, to salvage “as many tree trunks and limbs as possible, which are being shared with local woodworkers and wood mills,” as stated in the district’s press release.
“Our reality is that [the facilities upgrade] project has to go forward,” Hatert said. “We want to do it in as sensitive and meaningful a way as we can.”
To read the school district’s press release in full, and to stay up-to-date on the ongoing construction process, go to http://www.ysschools.org/construction.
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