News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sisters voters will decide this week whether to pass a $5.5 million dollar bond levy that the Sisters School Board considers the cornerstone of their 10-year plan to maintain the capacity of Sisters' schools.
The bond includes $3.5 million dedicated to building eight new classrooms on the elementary school campus and for refurbishing the old intermediate school to accommodate the seventh and eighth grade classes. Approximately $2 million will be used for capital projects such as fencing, underground irrigation for playing fields, equipment for technology labs and maintenance and transportation.
According to the school board, the bond is necessary to relieve overcrowding at both the elementary school and the middle/high school and to maintain or replace deteriorating equipment and facilities.
Board members and school district officials expressed concern that many citizens don't recognize the urgency of the district's needs.
"People need to understand that we've reached capacity at the middle/high school," said school board chairman Bill Reed. "A lot of people don't believe we've reached capacity until they see modular classrooms in the parking lot. But we're not far from that unless we meet this problem head on."
School district Business Manager Earl Armbruster said that, if the bond does not pass, "Next year class sizes would go up. My guess is that the computer lab at the elementary school would be dead; we have failing equipment.
"We'll just be stacking them higher and deeper," Armbruster said.
According to the school board's estimates, the bond would cost approximately $50 per year on a $100,000 home. Voters were to receive mail-in ballots on October 23 for the November 7 election.
The classroom expansion was recommended by a Long Range Planning Committee composed of community members and school staff appointed by the school board two years ago. The plan was to ease crowding at the elementary school by expanding that facility and ease crowding at the middle/high school by taking the seventh and eighth grade classes out of the high school.
Long range plans to maintain the capacity of the schools for the next 10 years also call for the institution of year-round education at the elementary and middle school levels in about three years.
But Reed emphasized that year-round education is another step in the process and is not at issue in the bond election.
"We will not institute year-round education unless we have a clear mandate from the school district," Reed said.
Long Range Planning Committee members noted that year-round school alone will not alleviate crowding, particularly at the middle/high school. They found that the high school is too small to implement an alternative schedule and that middle school aged students need to be moved to another facility to make room at the high school.
"No matter what we do, we need to have the facility in place," Armbruster said.
Critics have argued that this is a temporary quick-fix that is not the most effective use of taxpayers money. They have also expressed concerns that bringing more students into the old intermediate school would heighten safety risks at the busy intersection of Highway 20 and Camp Polk Road.
For those reasons, critics argue, it would be better to float a larger bond and build a new middle school.
Reed said that a new school is contemplated in about 10 years, but that it is not a viable option in the immediate future. The district could fund construction of a new school, Reed said, but with the decline in per-student state funding as a result of Measure 5, the district could not afford the day-to-day costs to staff and operate a new facility.
"You can hardly afford to open a school in Oregon these days unless it is full," Reed said. "This (plan) is by far the most economical way for the school district to go."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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