News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
The community is invited to forums on school facilities needs.
The Sisters School Board is considering asking voters in May for a bond for facilities repairs and upkeep. No decision has yet been made, but the board took action last night to preserve eligibility for potential state "matching funds."
Sisters could be eligible by lottery to receive as much as $4 million in grant funding to supplement a bond. In order to retain that eligibility, the board passed a resolution on January 6 calling for a bond election for an amount not to exceed $10.7 million.
"The grant application is due at the end of this month," Superintendent Curt Scholl told the board Wednesday. "The resolution is really a formality in that process."
The board unanimously approved the resolution, despite some head-shaking at the state process.
"It's a dumb way to distribute public money," said board member Jeff Smith. "Even though it's a dumb way to distribute money, I'm going to stick my hand out and hope we get some."
The district should hear whether it will receive grant funds well before determining whether they will actually put a bond measure on the ballot. That decision will be made in March.
Scholl also received board backing to explore hiring a professional firm to survey the broad Sisters community as to what they would like to see in a bond.
"That would help us craft what this looks like," he said.
The Sisters community will have a chance to learn about local school facilities' needs and weigh in on what is to be done about them in a community forum set for Thursday, January 14, at 6:30 p.m. in the Sisters Middle School cafetorium.
Another forum is set for Monday, January 25, at Sisters Elementary School.
Sisters School District staff and officials will lay out the needs faced by the district to repair, maintain and update school facilities; take questions from the public; and solicit public opinion.
In November 2014, Sisters voters turned down a $14.5 million bond request to rehabilitate, improve, and maintain facilities.
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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