Online auction underway for Canton City Schools unused, unwanted equipment, furniture

CANTON ‒ Looking for some old desks and tables? Maybe commercial kitchen equipment or a piano?

Those are among the 700 items up for auction from Canton City Schools.

The district, with the help of Kiko Auctioneers, is hosting an online sale of classroom furniture, stage equipment, bleachers and playground stuff.

Many come from the Souers Adult Education Center and Mason Elementary School, which are set to be razed to make way for new elementary schools.

"We collected so many things across the years and we have just been storing them," Assistant Superintendent Jason Dixon said. "There's a lengthy and time-consuming process to get rid of these items and we just never did it."

An audit of the district property found there was a cache of outdated and unused items being stored, he said.

Among the items up for auction: Two scoreboards from Memorial Fieldhouse, musical instruments, basketball hoops and commercial kitchen equipment such as large ovens, serving lines and dishwashers.

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Canton City Schools' Kiko auction

Online bidding at www.kikocompany.com began Saturday and runs through Dec. 15.

An in-person viewing of items will be 10 to 11 a.m. today at the former Souers school, 2800 13th St. SW. All of the auction items are located at the school except for the doublewide trailers and playground equipment, which are at Mason at 316 30th St. NW.

Any money raised from the sale will be put into the general fund and go toward the new building projects, officials said. Dixon has no idea how much the auction will generate. He believes it could be as much as $50,000.

Canton City Schools' new buildings

The district plans to construct two new buildings on the Mason and Souers sites. The new elementary schools will house kindergarten through sixth-grade students.

In May, Canton City School voters approved a 36-year bond issue that will generate $60 million to fund the effort.

Dixon said the construction timeline includes the demolition of the two existing schools sometime after the new year with construction beginning in the summer.

The two schools will be in a U-shape configuration with the younger students housed on one side and the older students in the other wing. The classes will be connected in the middle with common spaces such as the library and cafeteria.

A more than 85,000-square-foot elementary school will be built at the Souers school site and a slightly smaller elementary school will be constructed at the Mason school site. The schools could be ready for the 2026-2027 school year.

In October, the school held open houses for alumni to get one last look.

Souers opened in 1963. In 2005, the middle school was serving 600 students. In 2008, after learning it would cost around $8.16 million to renovate and expand the school, district officials opted to close the school. It is named after Loren E. Souers, director of Harter Bank and Trust, a World War II Army veteran and a lifelong Canton resident.

The school reopened 10 years later as the district's Adult Career and Technical Education Center and its Apire Adult College and Career Readiness program. The programs moved to the Timken Campus in 2022.

Construction on Mason began on March 21, 1950, and cost $410,376.59 to design and build. The school housed kindergarten through eighth-grade students. The school was completed in September 1951 and was named for Jesse Henry Mason, superintendent of schools from 1928 to 1947.

Dixon said he has removed items from both schools that would be deemed historical such as the plaque commemorating the school's construction, superintendent and board of education members at the time the school opened. He also removed the plaque from Baxter School before it was demolished. He has plans to create a historical center for the district.

Reach Amy at 330-775-1135 or amy.knapp@indeonline.com.

This article originally appeared on The Independent: Online auction begins Saturday for 700 items from Canton City Schools