The Butler School District still has options to sell its four vacant elementary school buildings.

The district last week finished a closed bid process. Then Monday night school board members rejected both bids they received for two of the schools.

“They could actually do another round of sealed bids if they want to,” said Dale Lumley, superintendent.

Other options include a private sale, either by representing themselves or hiring a real estate agent. A public auction is also another, albeit less likely, possibility.

“It seems unlikely that we would do that,” Lumley said of a public auction.

The Center for Community Resources had bid $150,000 for Broad Street Elementary, and Robert Oesterling had bid $100,000 for either Clearfield or Oakland elementary schools during the closed bid process.

Neither bid met appraised values of the buildings, which were released Monday night.

The district hired two appraiser for the buildings over the summer. The averages of both appraisers are $456,500 for Broad Street, $236,000 for Clearfield, $362,500 for Oakland and $530,000 for Meridian.

Mike Robb, executive director of The Center for Community Resources, said he hoped to convert Broad Street into a community center. He still wants to consider it as a possibility.

“We think it’s a good building for the community, and we have some good community use for it. We anticipated our bid wouldn’t be accepted, but we didn’t have all of the information that’s now released,” Robb said.

Oesterling had plans to expand his wholesale electronic cigarette business, now based in Clarion, to the Butler area with the intention of making one of the closed schools a warehouse.

However, with the lower appraisal amounts at $225,0oo for Clearfield and $300,000 for Oakland, he’s not sure if he’d be willing to pay that much for an older school building.

“The thing about buying a school like that, there’s got to be a lot of renovations that have to happen before you can use the building,” Oesterling said.