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School bond goes to voters Tuesday
The Mountain Home School District will ask voters Tuesday for the second time to approve its $37 million bond proposal to complete Phase II of the junior high.
Completion of Phase II will turn the junior high into a four-year high school by adding a 28-classroom two-story wing, two computer labs, a professional-technical building, a performance arts wing and a 3,000-seat gymnasium.
The $1.5 million needed to replace the existing roof at Lloyd Schiller Gymnasium is also included in the bond.
Registered voters can vote from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at any of the schools in the district or at the Pine-Featherville Senior Center. Unregistered residents can register to vote at any polling site.
The bond must receive a super majority of 'yes' votes to pass. A super majority is approval from 2/3 of participating voters.
The proposal is similar to the $34.5 million bond the district asked for in September but has increased to cover the rise in construction costs.
The $34.5 million bond failed to get a super majority by 73 votes last September.
If passed, the completed high school will house ninth to 12th grade students; the current high school will become a junior high for seventh- and eight-grade students, and Hacker Middle School will hold fifth- and sixth-grade students.
The district believes the proposal will significantly improve the quality of education for students in the district.
"This is what we need. We're not building it because it's pretty and would be nice to have," Superintendent Tim McMurtrey said.
"The kids deserve a good school. That is what this is, a good building that is going to last," he said.
The additions will expand educational opportunities for students, make new technology available in classrooms and eliminate overcrowding at the high school, junior high and middle school.
The high school's professional-technical program, the term preferred over vo-tech classes, will have a building nearly double the size of its current building.
The increased size will increase the number of students who can take professional-technical classes, such as automotive and industrial mechanics, carpentry, video productions and editing, drafting classes, health occupations and professional applications.
With limited space, students are often turned away from these programs at present. More space would eliminate that from happening.
The school district feels those classes are important because they teach students skills to be successful out of high school.
"It's very important because not every kid wants to go to college," McMutrey said. "We try to provide a well-orientated education."
Auto mechanics instructor Lynn Knudson is quick to point out students that do go to college or other post-secondary schools can use skills learned from the professional-technical program to work while in school.
He feels professional-technical programs not only help students stay in school, but also keep them focused in other classes.
"Student's aren't just interested in government and English, but they will take these classes and pass them if they know they need to take advanced classes," Knudson said.
With more space, and additional teachers, students would be able to maximize their experience in the professional-technical programs. Not only would more students be able to enroll in the classes, they would learn more in class.
Knudson said the increased space would give his students more opportunity to do more live work since his biggest challenge is finding enough room to set up equipment and demo procedures before students can work on their own.
Because of the space limitation, his Auto 1 and 2 classes are limited in the amount of live work they can do.
The increased professional-technical program opportunity would be available to ninth graders who currently are limited in the electives they can take since they are in a separate building.
The district feels that isn't the only advantage of housing ninth- to 12th-grade students together.
High school principal Jeff Johnson thinks it would help reduce the number of students who drop out between ninth and 10th grade and students would be more likely to understand they are working towards graduation credits.
Ninth-grade teachers would be able to teach more classes since the junior high only offers six courses a semester while the high school offers eight. That further expands the number of classes available to students.
The addition of the performance arts wing also increases the number of classes available to students.
The wing will consist of a 500-seat auditorium, band and choir classrooms, a few individual practice rooms and a classroom built directly behind the stage for the drama program.
"It's long overdue that students in performing arts have a place of their own," said Taunya Page, the high school drama teacher.
Because band and choir would have their own classrooms, each teacher could teach a full day's worth of classes instead of sharing a room with each other as they currently do.
The drama program would benefit from being able to practice on a stage without having to compete with a PE class or athletic team practicing at the same time.
Drama students would be able to focus more on the technical aspects of a show, such as lighting and sound.
When not being used as a teaching station, the auditorium could be used for community events, such as presentations like Rachel's Challenge or performances like Idaho Ballet. Both of those events occurred in the high school gym in the last two months.
The gym is another teaching station that would improve under the proposed plan.
In addition to the main court, the gym will have two courts in the mezzanie, the upper deck.
Mountain Home High School athletic director Jim Clark said the main court would most likely have the capacity to be split in half. Combined with the current junior high gym, the new high school would have four gyms and five courts.
Johnson said with the additional courts and the included weight room, up to four PE classes could occur at once instead of the two that can currently take place.
The additional gyms would make scheduling practice time for the school's athletic teams easier, specifically for the basketball teams.
The high school has a varsity, junior varsity, sophomore and two freshmen teams for boys and girls.
To accommodate the 10 teams during the season, practice is often scheduled until 8:30 p.m. Teams are sometimes sent to practice at Hacker Middle School, which has four teams of its own, or the sophomore team shares the court at the junior high with the freshman team.
Clark said scheduling teams for practice becomes more complicated when there is a home basketball game or wrestling meet. The wrestling team uses the school's only regulation size court to hold its meets.
The wrestling team will have its own practice room big enough to hold two mats on the same level as the gym floor. That will prevent student athletes from having to carry mats up and down stairs for home meets. It also gives the successful program the space it needs for its growing numbers.
The improved facilities will allow the school to hold district wrestling meets and basketball tournaments.
Clark said the current gym does not have the ability to hold district meets and he has had to turn down holding the events because there isn't enough seating in the gym.
The new gym will have enough seating to host major tournaments as well as indoor graduation ceremonies. Planned indoor ceremonies would eliminate the element of chance instead of allowing the weather to dictate if the ceremonies are held indoors or outdoors.
The bond will help overcrowding at Hacker. Currently there are 899 students in a building with a maximum capacity of 926. In August, 946 students are expected to show up on the first day of school.
Reducing the number of students in the building by a grade will reduce the wear and tear on the building and decrease the amount of traffic associated with the school.
To finance the completion of the building, the school district is seeking the approval of a $37 million bond over 20 years. The new debt would be added to the existing debt from the 1995 bond that built the junior high.
The bond will have a levy rate of .00175 or $1.75 per $1,000 of taxable assessed value of property in the school district.
If passed, the levy rate will be added to the levy rate of the existing bond until 2015 when the first bond is paid off. The levy rate will remain the same in 2015 and the full amount collected will go towards the new bond.
Taxes on property with a taxable assessed net value of $100,000, would increase an additional $14.59 a month.
Net value is determined once the homeowner's exemption has been applied to the original assessment.
The homeowner's exemption is given to owner-occupied houses and for tax year 2007 was equal to less 50 percent of the value of the property, including up to one acre of land, or the maximum of $89,325. That means if the owner of the property occupies a $189,325 house on one acre, the owner would pay the same taxes for property valued at $100,000.
The assessed value within the school district was $1,005,064,817 for 2007. With the 0.00175 levy rate, the school district would have raised approximately $1.75 million in 2007, had the bond already been in place.
Because the assessed value within the school district increases yearly, the levy rate decreases slightly from year to year.
Rather than pass the bond in pieces, the school district is asking voters for the full amount of what it would cost to complete the project.
McMurtrey said building in phases would cost more since the cost will continue to rise with each new bond.
"We feel prudent to do it once. It's better for taxpayers to do it this way," McMurtrey said.
The current junior high was built in 1998 with the plan to expand it into a high school within a few years. Enrollment rates in the district declined, causing the school bond to delay pursuing the bond until September.