College Community plans $49.5 million school renovation project

Voters in the College Community school district will decide on April 7 whether to pass a $49.5 million bond referendum to fund renovations of five schools, after the school board on Thursday set the election in a unanimous vote.

John Speer, the district's superintendent, said the bond sale would fund renovations at Prairie High School, Prairie Creek Intermediate School and three elementary schools (Prairie Crest, Prairie Heights and Prairie View). The project represents the first of two phases in the district's 10-year facilities plan, which the school board adopted in November.

At the high school, Speer said, renovations would include new classroom, music and activity space, as well as a new main entrance with office space. The school's aging HVAC and electrical systems also would be renovated, Speer said.

The three elementary schools - which were built in the 1960s and 1970s - also need some HVAC system work, Speer said, and each building has other individual needs.

In addition, the district would build a new commons and cafeteria area at the high school and begin renovations at the intermediate school.

The project is necessary in part because of enrollment growth, Speer said. College Community schools currently include about 5,100 students, but the district's enrollment projections show about 6,100 students attending in 2024. The district also has seen a high school enrollment increase of approximately 20 percent in the last six or seven years, Speer said.

'Our buildings are bursting at the seams, so we have to do something,” he said.

The $49.5 million bond sale would initially increase property taxes in the district by about $2 per $1,000 of taxable valuation, Speer said. The district's property tax rate would then go down by about $0.20 per year and return to approximately its current level by the end of the plan, he added.

'We're getting a lot of bang for our buck,” Speer said.

Board secretary Jim Rotter said the district would buy back the bonds over a period of 18 to 20 years.

In the second phase of the facilities plan, Speer said, the district would return to voters with a second, $20 million bond referendum, possibly in 2019. That bond sale would fund the construction of a new intermediate school for fifth and sixth-graders, he said, as well as the completion of renovations at Prairie Creek, the current intermediate school. Prairie Creek would then become a ninth-grade building, Speer said, freeing up room at the Prairie Point building, which currently houses seventh, eighth and ninth-graders.

Speer said he is optimistic the April 7 vote on the first bond sale will pass. The district received petitions to call the vote with 203 signatures, Rotter said, far more than the 45 required.

More than 60 percent of voters must approve the bond sale for the referendum to pass, Rotter said.

l Comments: (319) 398-8204; andrew.phillips@thegazette.com