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The Central Valley School District was celebrating a critical victory on the ballot back in 1998.
Over 60 percent of voters had just passed a $78 million capital facilities bond that included $23 million in state matching funds. The revenue would go toward the construction of two new high schools and extensive renovations at a handful of other buildings throughout the district.
A few years later, in 2004, the West Valley School District emerged with a significant win of its own after residents passed a $35 million initiative by a 63 percent margin. The bond would include a $17 million state match and support a major overhaul of West Valley High School as well as improvements to other campuses.
Since 2004, capital facility campaigns in greater Spokane Valley school districts have struggled to earn the required supermajority – or at least 60 percent of the vote – for approval. Only the Freeman School District, in the May 2008 election, carried the electorate, procuring $19.5 million in funds, plus $10.5 million in state dollars, to finance the upgrade of a high school and elementary school, both built in the 1950s.
CVSD saw a pair of capital measures fail in recent years – a $55.2 million bond fell three percentage points short in March of 2006 and a $75.7 million in the general election that same year only garnered 54 percent of the ballot.
Meanwhile, the Spokane Public School District – an entity with 35 schools and a dozen support buildings on 544 acres – passed both its replacement maintenance and operations levy and a $288 million bond in March. Both initiatives earned over 63 percent of the vote.
A total of eight other school districts, including those in Cheney, Medical Lake and Deer Park, breezed to levy wins on the same ballot. Central Valley and East Valley both passed levies in February.
While Spokane Valley districts continue to have success passing replacement levies – funding sources that typically comprise around 20 percent of a general budget and pay for costs associated with transportation, staffing, building upkeep and other essentials – school administrators like John Glenewinkel, superintendent of the East Valley School District, are working to find ways to fund capital facility improvements at aging buildings.
EVSD has run three bond votes since March 2008, falling short each time. A request for $34.5 million in February only wound up with 52 percent of the ballot, down from 57 percent in May 2008.
Now Glenewinkel said the district will form a capital facilities planning committee that will look at building issues on each campus. District advocates like Guy Gifford, who recently ran for the EVSD school board, have been asked to be part of the group.
Glenewinkel said one of the charges of the committee will be to “first address the issues of programming at each school.”
“For instance, we need to build facilities that have the capability for more technology,” he said.
Glenewinkel also raised the possibility of utilizing capital levies instead of bonds to fund facility improvements. While such levies raise less money than bonds, they can be implemented with a simple majority, or at least 50 percent of the vote.
Glenewinkel said the capital facilities committee would likely be in place by sometime next month. He anticipated that the group would make a preliminary report to the school board by late February or early March.
In the Central Valley School District, a capital facilities planning committee was formed in May. The contingent includes a cross-section of school officials, parents, local business representatives and industry experts, some of whom were part of a smaller study group that provided an inventory of district buildings as part of a state-required process last year.
On Thursday, the committee held a community open house to present some of its findings and to gather feedback from residents regarding facility concerns. A questionnaire distributed at the event will be included on the district’s Web site – www.cvsd.org – through November.
According to Melanie Rose, CVSD spokeswoman, two more community meetings will be held in March and May of next year. The committee will present an interim study to the school board in March and have a final report ready by June, Rose said.
CVSD already has land set aside in the eastern portion of the district for two new schools.
CV Board President Cindy McMullen said committee has been providing the board with monthly updates on the process. She added that the inventory of current schools, which includes the status of mechanical, electrical and other infrastructure systems, provides a basis for future improvements.
“This allows the board and the district to prioritize capital requirements and explain to the public what we need to do in these facilities to make them good educational buildings,” McMullen said.
Mike Bissell, chairman of the committee, said the group is “still in the information gathering phase” and is holding meetings like the one on Nov. 12 “to see what the community thinks.”
Bissell said increased awareness will be a key to the success of any future capital facilities vote.
“People want to know where their tax money is going,” he said. “I think if the message is out there, people would support it.”
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By
Craig Howard
