By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
An evaluation is underway in wake of the defeat of the $157 million school bond issue during Tuesday’s election.
St. Joseph voters rejected the proposed 60-cent increase in the school levy with nearly 54% voting against the issue.
St. Joseph School Superintendent, Gabe Edgar, says school officials along with members of the school board now must sift through the message voters sent.
“There’re probably two messages,” Edgar tells KFEQmmunity. “I don’t know whether they want to be a three high school system or whether it was a tax increase issue. We’ll need to find that out and we’ll get the information from the community and go from there.”
The bonds would have financed construction of a new high school in south St. Joseph, part of the long-range plan adopted by the Board of Education that would reduce the number of high schools in St. Joseph from three to two. The plan also calls for the number of elementary schools to be reduced from 13 to 10, what the district and the school board call “right sizing” the district.
Edgar says the Board of Education must decide whether voters objected to the tax increase or the two high school model.
“That’s what the board will have to discuss at the board work session next Monday, the 14th, to see whether they want to continue with the long-range plan that they approved in August,” Edgar says. “And we will provide recommendations along the way from the administration.”
Edgar says he will sit down with his superintendent cabinet, a group of 22 school officials, to discuss next steps and what it will recommend to the Board of Education.
A lot is at sake as the school board attempts to determine what direction to take in wake of the defeat at the polls and whether to stick with the long-range plan.
“It changes the high school system. It changes the model at the elementary and the model at the middle school and so we have to put all those pieces together,” Edgar points out. “It won’t take us long, but it looks very different than what it looked like with two new high schools.”
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