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WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Dr. Mark Schiowitz, a former Wilkes-Barre Area School Board member who once would have voted to close Meyers High School, is pushing a plan he thinks would save it and avoid a merger in the works.&#8220;I&#8217;m not an engineer or an architect,&#8221; Schiowitz said after providing a side-by-side comparison of his plan and the school board&#8217;s current proposal. &#8220;I&#8217;m a guy who cares about education and has done as much homework as I can.&#8221;Schiowitz was appointed to the school board in December 2010 to finish the last year of a term vacated when Teresa McGuire moved from the area and resigned her position.When discussion of options for Meyers came up at a September 2011 meeting, Schiowitz said he would have supported closing it. His opinion has now changed with research into optimal school sizes.After leaving the board, Schiowitz increasingly spoke out against school consolidation, and is a prominent member of Save Our Schools, a non-profit set up by his wife to preserve the three high school system.The school board has voted to consolidate Meyers and Coughlin grades nine through 12 at a new building on the Coughlin site, and to expand Kistler Elementary to house grades seven and eight now in Meyers. Estimates suggest total cost could hit $100 million.Schiowitz&#8217;s proposal: Build a new high school, grades 7 to 12, near the Solomon/Plains Memorial elementary/junior high complex, do gradual upgrades and repairs to Meyers and sell the Coughlin site.Schiowitz stressed that, while he has discussed his proposal with some SOS members, it&#8217;s not an SOS plan.Some highlights in his comparison:&#8226; His plan would not only save the cost of razing Coughlin, it could generate money from the sale of what could be a valuable site in downtown Wilkes-Barre.&#8226; It eliminates the thorny issue the board is grappling with: Where to put Coughlin students during construction. Half could go as planned to the renovated Mackin Elementary building while the other half could stay in the newer Coughlin annex during construction.&#8226; It avoids the cost of construction at Kistler while creating similar set ups for students: Three high schools housing grade 7-12 each with a nearby elementary school.&#8226; It eliminates an expected increase in transportation costs because most Meyers students walk to school while most Coughlin students arrive by bus.&#8226; It maintains Meyers and thus does not risk a negative impact on the neighborhood from shutting down the historic structure.&#8226; A smaller school at the Plains Township site means more parking, as well as better expansion options, than a large building at the Coughlin site.Schiowitz concedes he doesn&#8217;t have all the information the school board had in making its decision. And two issues could weaken his proposal.The Plains Township site is known to have soil issues that would likely require costly site preparation, as was the case when Solomon was built; and the design team hired by the school board has warned that water seeping between the outside facade and inner walls has caused extensive, if invisible, damage at Meyers that would be too costly to repair and could make the building dangerous in coming years.But Schiowitz believes it&#8217;s important for SOS and anyone opposed to the current plan to do more than &#8220;just being negative.&#8221;&#8220;I think it&#8217;s better to provide an alternative at least as a talking point when you don&#8217;t like what&#8217;s already been decided.&#8221;SOS has slated a meeting open to the public for 7 p.m. Dec. 9 at the Polish Veterans of America Club, 2 S. Oak St., Plains Twp.<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta>By Mark Guydishmguydish@www.timesleader.com</bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</shirttailMeta></div>

Former W-B Area board member Dr. Mark Schiowitz offers alternate high school plan