It was a close call, but yesterday and last night the residents of Madison county voted to approve 19 million dollars of funding for Madison School District building projects. The vote required a 2/3 or 66% majority to pass, it received 68%.
For those of you who haven't heard the plans I'll give you a short run down. The current high school will be updated and will become the jr. high. A massive new facility will be built for the high school. It will be two stories in some places and will include a huge performing arts center as well as a seperate building for the vo-tech programs. New elementary schools are also being built in Lyman and Burton.
The plan for the current jr. high is to sell it for around 5 Million bucks. So, if any of you have gotten filthy rich in the past eight years and can think of what to do with a crappy old building with asbestos and sewer problems, bring your money home.
3 comments:
It should be noted that the 19 million was in addition to about 40 million that was approved a couple of years ago.
I personally am pretty upset with the non-frugality of our current school board! It is also worth mentioning that since the original bond passed in 2004, the school board has petitioned for the additional bond every 6 months. What does that tell you? They never planned on just spending what they asked for. It is a hard blow to the Madison county tax payers, the land owners I should say, who are actually the ones that pay for the bond (which is ironic since the majority of the elementary age children using the new buildings are children of BYU student families). The new high school is totally worthless....something they believe will accomadate for the future, which according to recent growth polls of the past 5 years does not substantiate a student body large enough. There has been growth at the elementary level (2% every year) but they do not stay through Jr High, barely through MMS, again, young children of families only in Rexburg for a few years then they move away.
Yes, the old Jr High on Main is a health hazard, as if we didn't know that when we were there, but, our high school will be way too big for the needs of future Jr. High students.
There is my dissappointment aired. I voted no every time the bond election came up when I was in Rexburg, so I suppose I am a bit bitter that after 3 years it passed. I should get over it...I'll work on it. Hey, at least they are building some super elementary schools for Burton area and Lyman (much needed). Way to go Supernintendo Thomas.
I think it's interesting that Nancy is so vehemently opposed to the new high school but in favor of the hospital expansion...a project that forced a dozen families out of their homes, destroyed a lovely neighborhood, and used a huge sum of tax dollars.
She must have gone to a different high school than I did if she thinks that the school is sufficient to meet the complex needs of the community and its youth. While the old high school is nostalgic and holds a lot of great memories for all of us, it's not hard to recognize that it's not a great building. It is out of date, inconvenient (remember the crazy floorplan that took all three years of high school to figure out?), and too small. I think it is a huge victory for Rexburg to have passed this bond. It's just sad that it has taken so many years for the citizens to recognize the need for new schools in the city.
As for Nancy's claim that such a large portion of elementary students are the children of college students...first of all, that's a ridiculous claim, most college students leave town well before their children go to school (I would be interested in seeing an exact statistic, but I imagine the percentage is quite low). However, even if the students were all children of college students, we still have a responsibility to educate them. Who cares if their parents aren't landowners paying property taxes. That doesn't make our responsibility to educate them less important. It is an incredibly selfish view to say that we shouldn't spend money educating children who aren't going to live in Rexburg long term.
Fortunately, only 32% of the people of Rexburg share this selfish view! I'm proud of the citizens of Rexburg and Madison county for approving this bond and look forward to the real progress that is taking place in our community.
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