BUTLER TWP — Officials with the Clarence C. Brown Education Center began Thursday night to discuss how to sell the school and its furnishings after voting to close the school.

The five-person board has one representative from each school district that owns the Pittsburgh Pike Road building: Mars, Moniteau, Karns City, Seneca Valley and South Butler.

While all five school boards have voted to close the alternative and special needs school by June 30, they must vote a final time in May on the closing, according to solicitor Tom May.

The facility will close because it is not financially sustainable to keep it open with the declining enrollment, according to Wayde Killmeyer, executive director of the Midwestern Intermediate Unit IV, which runs the programming at the school.

When the Butler School District consolidated school buildings last year and opened its own alternative education and emotional support school at Center Avenue, Clarence Brown lost roughly half of its 40-some students, Killmeyer said.

The property sale could be done in many ways, but a public auction is recommended, according to Karns City Superintendent Eric Ritzert.

“(The auction) is probably the quickest avenue,” Ritzert said. “Are there betters ways? That’s debatable.”

May said the building could be sold in a private sale, through bids or through a Realtor, but he also recommended an auction.

“If you put it up with bids, it may take a long time,” May said, citing the Butler district’s slow sale process for four of its elementary school buildings that closed during the May 2015 consolidation.

In addition to the building, the school districts own some of the furnishings in Clarence Brown, but the MIU IV also owns some of the furnishings. Decisions about the ownership and sale of those items must be made, May said.

The joint operating committee also discussed the need to have the property appraised. While May and Mars School Board representative Rebecca Brown said the property should be appraised, May told the committee that it is too early in the process to have an appraisal done.

According to county records, the Clarence Brown school is on 4.87 acres, which is assessed at $189,000, May said. Because that assessment is for tax purposes, the market value of the property is likely 10 times that amount or $1.8 million, May said.

“If only I’d won the Powerball,” Killmeyer said during the meeting.

Brown also stressed the importance of finding suitable alternatives for the students who attend Clarence Brown.

The decision of where to send students will depend on the needs of the children and what options are available. which must be determined by each district’s special education staff, according to Melissa Wyllie, the MIU IV’s director of special education.

Ritzert said, “On the student side, that is something that individual districts will handle.”

He said many of the districts have begun looking into other programs, another process that will need to include the students’ families.

The Butler district’s Center Avenue school may be a feasible option for the students, according to Butler Superintendent Dale Lumley.

“(The Center Avenue school) will certainly be an option for some of those students,” Lumley said. “We will accommodate as many of them as possible.”

Aaron Royhab, the Center Avenue schools supervisor of special education, already has been in contact with individuals from the other districts, according to Lumley.

He stressed that it is early in the process and every potential student will be screened by Royhab to determine if the Center Avenue school fits their needs.

Despite discussions about the closing, Wyllie wants the last months at Clarence Brown to be positive ones.

“We want the kids to feel good about this year,” she said. “We don’t want this to be sad.”

A public hearing on the status of the Clarence Brown center will be at 6 p.m. Feb. 2 at the school, 1104 Pittsburgh Pike Road.