[Editor’s Note: The School District is convening a special community meeting this evening at 6:30 in the Garden Room at the Vets Auditorium to talk about progress on capital projects and to air out the state of the bond measure.]
I am confused. The process of identifying construction and maintenance needs at all of the campuses started over eight months ago.
Two School Board members, Laura Chardiet and Kathy Papalis, were intrinsically involved with staff, principals, parent groups, teachers, and construction people to identify over $165 million of maintenance, repair, refurbishment, health and safety concerns that are on all of the school sites.
The Board voted to hire a consultant to assess the feasibility of placing a bond measure on the November ballot. The deadline for placing that measure on the ballot was in early August. The Board voted to pay around $27,000 for a representative survey of likely voters, which contacted 400 voters. The survey showed that over 66 percent of the respondents approved placing a bond measure on the ballot.
Answers Were Not Difficult
At the July 1 meeting when the decision had to be made to meet the election deadline and after the survey results were presented, Board member Karlo Silbiger raised a slew of questions that could have been easily addressed during the entire process.
Why didn’t he raise those questions to give staff and the School District adequate time to research and prepare answers? Questions that may have come up after could have been properly addressed and answered. Or a process could have been put into place to address them.
As for educating the voting public, educational forums could have been scheduled to further increase awareness and explain the construction needs to the community, to explain economic ramifications, especially to the senior citizens, who, we know, are very diligent about voting.
There were four months between July and the November election, four months in which a lot of education, prioritizing, and planning could have been done.
Instead the bond measure has been shelved. It may or may not make it on to the next ballot. Another $27,000 or more will be spent to again assess the mood of the voters. Assessments of each campus likely will have to be repeated, resulting in staff, parents and interested parties having to repeat their hard work.
More Empty Time Will Pass
At the end of the day, another six months, a year or more will pass before critical needs even start to be addressed. Our kids still will be endangered by falling roof tiles, corroded plumbing, uneven pavements, inadequate heating and cooling and other clearly identified problems.
Getting funding for a bond; designing fixes; construction plans; consulting suppliers; having the School Board vote to approve suppliers, projects and builders; getting state approval where needed; consulting an oversight committee.
All of these take a significant amount of time.
Help me understand why this is happening? Why weren’t pertinent questions and concerns raised earlier?
Our kids, our wonderful teachers, our administrators, and our hard-working staff people deserve better. At this rate, I suspect many needs of the schools will not be addressed until my son is in college. He just started high school.
We voters, including the many seniors in the community, deserve the right to vote in a timely manner to decide the future of our schools and our community.
This community overwhelmingly supported the parcel tax when the needs were explained. It is likely that they will support a bond as well.
Ms. Wallace may be contacted at jamie@imbob.net
