STEVENSVILLE – Stevensville School leaders will go back to the voters this spring to ask approval for a pair of bond issues to bring the first major improvements to the district’s elementary and high school buildings in decades.
The decision to seek a vote on a $6.3 million bond for the Elementary School District, and a $14.1 million bond for the high school, comes after extensive re-tooling of bond packages that failed last year.
The school board is endorsing the proposal after extensive discussions and surveys.
“There is significant support for the elementary and high school remodel, and then also some repairs to our gymnasium facility,” said Stevensville School Superintendent Dr. Robert Moore. “Not as much support for our outdoor athletic facilities that we tried to pass the last time. We put basically everything that was on a 20-year plan on the table and said ‘okay, what will you support? What do you think?’ And one thing that came back was a Trade and Technological Education Center.”
That means the bond proposals will still include the critical upgrades that are needed to the elementary and high school buildings, which are not only showing their age, but becoming an expense because of the old infrastructure. Some of those improvements have been deferred for more than a decade.
That would solve health and safety concerns, but also be an effort to modernize not only classrooms, but the programs that use them.
“We have science rooms that haven’t been touched since they were built in 1960. And so we’re trying to modernize our educational facilities and classrooms. But we’re also trying to modernize our programs to meet the needs for, not just college-based education, but people going out into trades education and moving into the job market that way.”
The voting will be done by mail, with ballots sent on April 18, to be returned by May 7.
