School bond vote reframed

WASHINGTON, Iowa - Supporters are optimistic that the fourth try in six years for a bond issue for a new Washington High School will pass on Tuesday.

A 60 percent majority is required to approve the sale of $11.9 million in general obligation bonds to build a new high school next to the junior high, renovate the old high school for use by the junior high students (probably as a middle school) and renovate the two elementary schools. Additional funding will be from revenue bond sales repaid from local-option sales tax funds.

The proposed plan is a compromise worked out with the help of an Iowa Construction Advocate Team, a service of the Iowa Association of School Boards. Interim Superintendent David Sextro brought the team on board after December's defeat of the third bond issue attempt.

“When we allowed outside eyes, professional ones, to look at the total picture, to do an analyses and come up with a 10- to 15-year plan, it opened up possibilities,” Sextro said,

Residents appear to have responded to in a positive manner, he said.

He said the plan brings the community together by giving both sides what they want.

Even more, he stressed, all the district facilities, including two elementaries, are now involved.

Sextro, who leaves at the end of the 2009-2010 academic year, said the creation of a Facilities Advisory Committee to oversee the project also is important “because it will continue” regardless of who is superintendent.

The new plan offers two opposing sides what each wanted: a new high school and retaining and remodeling the 1918 one. From the start, the division was about building new or renovating the old, with the backers of the latter citing the marbled lobby, acoustically perfect auditorium and elevator as assets of the existing school.

Estimated completion for all projects, if the issue passes, is five years, or about 2015.