“Canton City School District is not a bank.”

John Rinaldi, president of the Canton City Board of Education, told about a half-dozen citizens and journalists Saturday morning that the school board’s involvement in a loan to the Pro Football Hall of Fame Village project did not mean the school district was loaning money to the village.

“The Canton City School District is not a bank,” Rinaldi said.

He went on to address a few related issues, which may have been meant to reassure skeptics.

“There are no active plans to move the high school,” he said.

“We will get a great football center (the former football practice locker rooms were torn down as part of the Tom Benson Stadium construction.)

“If someone dumped a whole lot of money onto the Canton City School District, we could consider building a new high school downtown. But for now, we have a fine high school. McKinley High School is the most expensive piece of property in Stark County, and we own it.

“We will make sure, that we get a baseball field and we get a football field,” Rinaldi said.

Both the varsity baseball field and football practice field adjacent to McKinley High School’s main campus, were sacrificed for the Hall of Fame’s youth sports fields.

These comments came after a closed-to-the-public executive session of the Board of Education Saturday morning. Following the executive session, the board chose to delay approval of a resolution that would help clear the way for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Village project to receive a $100 million loan. The board had called the special meeting for the purpose of approving the resolution. Members came back into public session, however, to say that other parties to the loan transaction were still studying the details, so the board had decided to wait for them.

The agreement appears to spell out limits on the obligations that the village has to the school district. The board is likely to meet again soon to consider the resolution.