Seeking input
Nyssa School District officials set another meeting to gather ideas on proposed school bond
By JESSICA KELLER
ARGUS OBSERVER
Tuesday, November 20, 2007 11:12 AM PST
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| Seventh- and eighth-grade reading teacher Peggi Phair teaches a group of students homophones, while another student studies independently, in a makeshift classroom adjacent to the Nyssa Middle School Commons Monday. A public meeting is being hosted Nov. 28 to discuss options for a proposed school bond. |
NYSSA — The Nyssa School Board unanimously approved a plan to place a school facilities bond before voters in November 2008, and the school district is now seeking additional public comment.
The Nyssa School District Forward Thinking Facilities Committee will host another public meeting to discuss new school facilities at 6 p.m. Nov. 28 at the Nyssa Middle School Commons.
Nyssa School District Superintendent Don Grotting said, although the School Board voted to go out for a facilities bond measure at October’s board meeting, the board directed the facilities committee to host another meeting to discuss options regarding what should be included on the November ballot.
“We’re trying to get a pulse on what the voters would support and what they won’t support,” Grotting said last week.
He said, at this point, the bond is tentatively posed to address new middle school facilities, but Nyssa High School also faces space issues because of added state-imposed science requirements.
The school district has hired architects to put together some cost estimates for possible facility plans for the bond measure, and Grotting said, the architects also met with teachers and administrators to discuss their needs.
Grotting said the School Board and the facilities committee are aware Nyssa is the highest-taxed community in Malheur County. He said school leaders want to put forth a bond proposal that will meet Nyssa school needs but also show they are good stewards of the taxpayers’ money.
Grotting said they want more information on various cost estimates for different proposals to take to school district residents prior to making any final decision.
At the moment, he said, the school district has a number of options, including building a new middle school that would accommodate current enrollment numbers; building a new middle school to accommodate up to 400 students if residents want to plan for growth; building a new middle school and adding on to the high school.
Grotting said architects met with middle school staff and looked at the plans from the previous school bond plan and determined whether there would be any revisions to that blueprint.
He said while the initial proposed middle school plan was fairly basic, a few revisions were made to the building plans.
Grotting said the previous design incorporated “shared spaces,” where teachers could combine classes for various purposes temporarily. Rather than include those shared spaces in the current design, he said, after questioning how often those shared spaces would be utilized, staff decided it would be more efficient to convert those areas into classrooms.
“That would accommodate for growth,” Grotting said.
Other questions that need to be answered for the upcoming bond, he said, revolve around whether the designated art department, situated in one of the modulars between the middle school and the high school that needs to be replaced, should continue to be shared by the middle school and the high school students or whether they should be separate.
Also, Grotting said, if the art rooms are separate, could the rooms be utilized for other things when art classes are not taking place.
“So we’re really trying to look at being as cost effective as we can, and trying to measure how much growth you plan for,” without putting forth a plan taxpayers are not in favor of because of the expense, Grotting said.
How much the voters will endure is a key question those involved in the bond proposal want answered, and they hope to gain insight into that query during next week’s public meeting.
“The bottom line is what growth should be planned for,” Grotting said. “We do not want to build something and five years later look and say ‘boy what did we do.’”
One previous option the facilities committee considered — building a new high school and moving the middle school students into the old high school building — was taken off the table for the moment, Grotting said.
He said when staff and the committee members examined the possibility, they concluded the cost to build a new high school would be too much. Grotting said he estimates a new high school would cost an extra $3 million to $6 million more than building a new middle school, in part because the high school serves four grade levels.
“It would be too much of a burden on the voters,” he said. At the meeting, architects will present some preliminary cost figures and design plans to the committee, Grotting said. The committee members will then give input based on what is presented and make any revisions, additions, deletions or suggestions on the direction they will like to see.
Grotting also said, the public is encouraged to attend and to provide input on what is presented and their ideas.
