When the Warren County School District school board got into discussions about selling the old Pleasant Township Elementary School, it was looking at heating and cooling, asbestos, the age of the structure, and just getting the property back on the tax rolls.

Those discussions have been serious for months and off-and-on for years. Until Monday, the building’s floor construction had never been on the radar of good reasons to keep the building.

“We discussed looking into options if we could sell it,” Operations Manager David Undercoffer said during Monday’s meeting of the physical plant and facilities committee. “We have a few key storage needs if we get rid of Pleasant.”

The district orders copier paper in huge quantities. Undercoffer said it takes two tractor trailers to bring the typical order of 44 pallets full of boxes of paper.

Ordering in bulk saves money.

The district simply houses that paper until it is needed. But, there is a limit. Pallets of boxes of reams of paper are heavy.

“We can’t just put pallets of paper anywhere,” he said.

The housing of surplus paper has been done at Pleasant. “It has a concrete-slab floor,” he said. “It’s an ideal place to put it.”

Another district building that is no longer used for instruction, Sugar Grove Elementary, is not suitable.

Undercoffer said the floor of that building is rated for about 60 pounds per square foot. “That’s not much more than household limits,” he said.

The board is still interested in unloading the building, and Undercoffer agrees. “I think it’s worth moving on from Pleasant,” he said.

It last had a roof replacement in 2000, new boilers in 1999, and it cost the district about $15,500 in utilities last year.

Undercoffer said the district could order paper in smaller quantities or store bulk orders in some of the other underutilized spaces in current buildings.

“These guys are used to making the most efficient decisions possible,” Superintendent Amy Stewart said. “More paper is more efficient… getting less paper… it will cost more money to do that.”

Paper storage lost the battle to disposing of the property.

“We want to get Pleasant out there and get it advertised,” Stewart said.