The Cincinnati Board of Education voted Monday to reinstate an adult education class and to sell a building to a school that will serve students with drug and alcohol problems.

        The votes came shortly after several residents urged the board to learn from the recent riots that tore through Cincinnati and to better serve youth and young adults.

        “We must show the children we believe we can handle all of their needs,” said Ernest Waits Sr. of Paddock Hills. ""You must do something now. There are young people out there that need to be put into vocational programs now.”

        At one point, Curtis A. Wells of Walnut Hills asked the superintendent and board members to resign.

        “This board over the past five years has let down the students of CPS, and someone needs to leave,” he said. “We're asking the city to make changes, and that needs to happen at the board, too. You should step aside.”

        The board took these actions:

        • A Licensed Practical Nurse adulteducation class scheduled to end this June will be reinstated, the board voted unanimously. Offered at the Queen City Career Center in the West End, the class was canceled because it was $300,000 in the red and had a dropout rate of 60 percent.

        Board member Catherine Ingram said she proposed the change because district administration did not come up with alternative plans to serve the city's adults.

        “How can you talk to me about community when parents are at home now not surviving?” Ms. Ingram said. “You can't say this is a program we don't need simply because it was losing dollars, because you are also losing children whose parents can't make a connection.”

        The action calls for a new nursing program to be cost-neutral to the district, and for the administration to ensure that the program receives enough financial and other support to make it a success.

        “If we're going to do something in this area, let's go into the area of emerging jobs,” Superintendent Steven Adamowski said. “Let's not hang onto fatal programs.”

        Mr. Adamowski said he was working to maintain GED and literacy programs in the district's schools and at 40 community sites. He said a planned vocational high school and an information technology program at Taft High would be open for evening adult classes.

        • A state-chartered high school for students with alcohol and drug problems will be allowed to purchase the McMillan Center building in East Walnut Hills for $25,000.

        The board voted 5-2 to sell the facility, closed since 1991. The building is appraised at $300,000.

        The Dohn School's $25,000 price takes into account more than $267,000 needed in environmental cleanups and renovations at the three-story building.

        The Dohn School would serve 250 students in the 36,000-square-foot facility. As a charter school, it receives money from the state but does not have to comply with the same regulations as public schools.

        The school's priority enrollment would be the 175 CPS students expelled each year for drug and alcohol violations.

        Dohn Superintendent Kate Bower said owning the property will enable the school to take out a mortgage to make renovations so the school can open this fall.

        “These students are severely at risk of arrest, incarceration and death,” Ms. Bower said. “If they lived in the suburbs and their families had money they could get residential treatment. These students don't have that kind of help.”

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