TECH ROOM … Inside the woodworking sector of the Tech Room, a built-in ventilation system was installed to help clear debris.
PHOTOS BY BRENNA WHITE / THE VILLAGE REPORETER
UNDER CONSTRUCTION … The outside view of the high school gymnasium under construction.
By: Brenna White
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
publisher@thevillagereporter.com
The Bryan City School District is moving forward with a significant expansion at the Bryan High School, an effort Superintendent Mark Rairigh said has been years in the making.
The district secured a $2.5 million Career Technical Education Equipment Grant from the State of Ohio – an initiative supported by Governor Mike DeWine and Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted.
The grant will fully fund the new career-tech wing. After the initial application took place in late 2024, the school learned it would be the recipient in early 2025. “We’ve been planning ever since,” said Rairigh.
The full project is estimated to cost around $6.2 million, combining state grant funding for the tech addition with locally saved funds for a new high school gymnasium and weight room.
“We currently don’t have a shop class,” explained Rairigh. “We want to bring back the industrial arts, we want to bring back kids working with their hands, learning how to work with tools, and prep themselves for a vocational pathway if that’s what they so choose. We do a good job covering college preparatory in our school, but we did not have this.”
Taking advantage of the construction already underway, the district elected to expand its athletic facilities as well.
“We thought it’d be a good opportunity for – while we are adding onto our facility, to go ahead and move forward with the addition of a gymnasium and weight room at the same time,” explained the Superintendent.
The current high school gym will become the junior high gym, relocating those activities out of the elementary building. The weight room will move from the off-site fieldhouse to a more accessible space within the high school.
The project also includes a main entrance, restrooms, a dedicated concession stand area, and an interior hallway connecting the two gyms.
Inside the tech wing, students will find an open-lab environment with dedicated spaces for woodworking, metalworking, welding, mechanics, and an attached computer lab for digital design programs such as CAD. The program will serve grades 6-12, with daily capacity expected to reach as high as 150 students.
Steel framing is now in place, roofing work is beginning, and Rairigh hopes the addition will be fully under roof by the Christmas holiday.
Construction began in May 2025 and remains on pace for completion in May or June of 2026, with the district anticipating full use of the new space for the 2026-2027 school year.
As Rairigh emphasized, “Our business sector, our families, are very much desiring for our kids to use their hands, learn how to create, learn how to build, so for that there is a lot of excitement generated right now.”