Royal schools may run bond election
ROYAL CITY - It's not official, but it's starting to appear that the Royal School District will run a new school construction bond election in November.
That was the consensus that seemed to come out of an April 4 school board work session, according to Superintendent Rose Search. Portable classrooms are still a consideration, but they are running a distant second.
Search said on Friday that a community group, led by Luis Sanchez, has offered to study why the last three bond elections failed and help campaign for a new one.
"We need to find out why there is a no vote," Search said. "Is it because of the economy? What is it?"
According to Search, there were about 40 people at the April 4 meeting. The gathering considered six options presented by district business manager Clinton Sherman and rejected four outright.
The options that were rejected were four-track year-around school, double-shifting, modular buildings and a capital projects levy. Former school board member Norm Stakkeland, who suggested double-shifting, did not attend the meeting.
Double-shifting was turned away mostly because of numerous foreseeable unintended consequences. It called for a morning session from 7 a.m.-12:25 p.m. for all grade levels and an afternoon session from 1-6:25 p.m.
"Pretty much everybody would want session A," Search said.
Certainly kindergarten parents would, she said. They wouldn't want their five-year-olds coming home at 7 p.m. These children would likely be tiring by mid-afternoon.
"They're still going to wake up early," Search said.
Another group that certainly would want session A, Search said, is the athletes. Practices are held in the late afternoons and evenings.
"We'd have to have double busing," Search said.
The all-year school plan divided the students and teachers into four tracks. Three tracks would attend school at the same time and one would be vacationing, and the buildings would be used all year.
The major challenge with this plan, according to Search, is that the district does not have the right combination of teachers to make it work.
"It's for large school districts with lots of teachers," she said.
Another challenge for all-year school is that farmers and farm worker families need to have their children available during summer months.
Modular buildings are better quality than portables, Search said, and they would be less expensive than brick-and-mortar buildings. But they would cost about $5 million to meet district space needs.
To get those funds, Sherman said, the district would have to pass a capital projects levy. If it did, the collection of $5 million would take six years to complete. By then, crowding would be much worse.
The rejection of these options left those in attendance with only portables and a bond to consider. Most did not like portables because they would lower aesthetic values at the school campus, which is currently all stick-built.
Portables most likely would have to be replaced within 10 years. And as enrollment grew, more would be needed.
According to Search, the board agreed to give the Community Committee, which was formed at the April 4 meeting, time to study a new construction bond's election chances and report back.
Search said the Community Committee has planned a meeting for April 18 at the high school library at 6:30 p.m. It will report to the board at its regular meeting on April 25.
Search said Sanchez and his group suggested Community Committee members would take up the challenge of promoting the bond one-on-one, door-to-door with other school district patrons.
"They would bring them down to the schools personally so they could see the crowding," Search said.
According to Sherman, occupancy of new buildings would not come until 2013 if a bond were approved by the voters. That would mean continued crowding.
Search said the district could deal with that temporarily by putting teachers on carts. So far, administrators are considering one at the middle school, but there could be one at the high school and one at the elementary.