Civic Groups Find Themselves Out In The Cold Kellogg School District Locks Out Groups In Dispute Over 60-Year-Old Building

All they got for Christmas was an eviction notice.

And several community groups now shut out of the Elk Creek School east of Kellogg are worried this will end hopes of turning a 60-year-old shuttered school building into a community resource center.

“We don’t understand what’s going on,” said Barbara Miller, who runs the People’s Action Coalition. “It’s a tragedy and a disservice to a number of people.”

The Coalition is a non-profit organization that keeps an eye on the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s cleanup of the Silver Valley and works on housing, employment and health care issues in the area. It subleased office space in the old two-story brick-and-concrete building in September 1994 from the Rev. Warren Sperry of Osburn.

Sperry had made a deal with the Kellogg School District to rent the building for his church, Miller said.

A local youth boxing club and a business known as VIP Referrals also subleased space and were part of a coalition trying to buy the building from the school district. The aim was to turn the building into a one-stop community resource center that housed everything from a food bank to a homeless shelter and a theater group.

About 10 days ago, school district representatives arrived at the old school to tell the three groups to leave. But “we couldn’t find a place to go,” said Betty Balisle of VIP Referrals, a one-person firm that finds nursing help, housekeepers and companions for the elderly and disabled.

The school district refused the group’s rent check and has rebuffed its attempts to purchase the building, Balisle and Miller said.

They point the finger at School Superintendent Larry Curry. But Curry said the school district has nothing to do with the dispute.

Sperry gave up his lease at the end of November because he knew that the school district was close to selling the building. As landlord, Sperry asked the people to leave, Curry said.

On Dec. 11, the school board decided to close and winterize the building, he said. But then a workman discovered the three groups were still there. So Curry gave them a week to leave.

They didn’t. Thursday the school district changed the locks and sent the occupants home though some of their belongings are still in the old school.

“This group had no authority to be there,” Curry said.

The school district quit using the building about five years ago.

It has been working for a year to clear up the title on the building so it can be sold.

The district desperately needs the cash to fix other buildings, Curry said.

The People’s Action Coalition and others are welcome to buy the building, worth an estimated $180,000. If they are unhappy, their argument is with Sperry, he said.

Sperry refuses to talk about the issue, beyond saying his lease is finished.

Clearing the building to sell it doesn’t make sense to Miller.

The groups have been asking to buy the building for a year and have been turned away, she said.

Requests for a year’s leeway to raise grants to buy the place also have been rebuffed, she said.

“We are the only buyers, so this doesn’t make any sense,” Miller said.

“We’ve fixed the roof, sealed the leaks and cracks … paid the rent and the utilities.

“Give us a year and the worst that could happen is we would leave the school in better condition than we found it.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo