Othello School Board members discuss possible bond

Othello School Board members will decide sometime in July whether or not to submit a construction bond for the expansion of school facilities and ­— if the answer is yes — it would be in the form of a bond proposal.

District officials presented the conclusions from a series of community meetings at the regular board meeting Monday. The tentative date for a bond to be submitted to voters would be Feb. 13, 2018 at the earliest.

District superintendent Chris Hurst said the people who attended the meetings had settled on two options. The preferred option, and the one recommended, would build a new elementary school and middle school, with the two schools sharing some space, and expand the existing Othello High School. The new elementary and middle schools would be built on district-owned land at the intersection of 14th Street and Lee Road. The district purchased the 80 acres earlier this year.

The estimated local construction bond for that option would be $55 million. Property owners would pay an estimated $1.56 to $1.58 per $1,000 of assessed property value, if the bond was approved.

The second option would be a new high school on the Lee Road property. The existing high school would become a second middle school.

The estimated construction bond would be $83,696,208. The district’s bonding capacity would mean the bond sales, and thus the project, would have to be delayed, said assistant superintendent Gina Bullis. Depending on assessed property values and paying down existing bonds, Bullis estimated a high school bond could be submitted to voters in 2026.

The first option would address the overcrowding at all grade levels, Hurst said, and allow an auditorium at each site. It also includes infrastructure for a sports complex on the 14th Street property.

The first option includes a 77,000-square-foot building, which would be divided into a kindergarten through fifth grade and a middle school. The two buildings would share some common space between them, he said.

Board member Tony Ashton asked about splitting the proposal into two separate bonds. The first bond would include the elementary and middle schools, with it going before voters in 2018. The second would include the high school renovation and the athletic complex, which he suggested running in 2019. “One (bond) to get what we really need today, which is the K-5 and 6-8 joint facility, and then the next year ask the community if they would like to do the high school.”

Ashton said he was concerned about the impact if the entire project was rejected. “I think all of these are needs, I just want to make sure we’re separating our absolute needs from the things we would like,” he said.

“I think there are multiple ways we could look at it,” Bullis said. One possibility, she said, is a bond big enough to build the elementary and middle schools, and include money to do start the project at the high school.