NEW ALBANY — Now that the hard part of winning the election is over, the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corp. has some work to do to get referendum projects off the ground.
“I think Wednesday was a day of celebration and joy,” Brad Snyder, deputy superintendent, said. “Thursday, we’re working. We’re making phone calls, we’re instructing architects, we’re moving forward with lease preparation.”
On Tuesday, Floyd County voters passed the district’s $87 million construction plan. Nine of the district’s schools will see renovations, a few with major overhauls and two schools scheduled for complete rebuilds.
Snyder said there’s a tentative timeline for some of the projects and more planning to do for the others, but neighboring districts are also watching to see what the referendum’s passage could mean for them.
TIMELINE
The paperwork’s already filed in some instances. Four projects — Slate Run Elementary School, New Albany High School, Prosser Career Education Center and Green Valley Elementary — are going before the New Albany Plan Commission on Tuesday for special exemptions to allow for changing the footprint of those buildings without going through the normal process for building projects in the city. Snider said the district also has to do the same for projects out in the county.
He said to make sure they don’t flood the construction market, they’ll stagger the opening of bids this spring. He said three projects should see starts this summer with the bids from construction companies opening in spring.
Green Valley Elementary School’s new facility will likely have ground broken once this school year ends. Snyder said the new building for that school — set up to address space needs and prevent students from requiring outdoor, portable classrooms — will go behind the current building. That way, students won't have to live through the disruption of construction in a school building they'll also have classes in.
He said he thought that construction project at $25.8 million would wrap up by the following school year.
Also expected to begin this year, the Prosser Career Education Center will see significant upgrades, projected to cost about $27.25 million. The upgrades will address security issues in the school, bring the cosmetology department from an off-campus building to the main campus, allow for better organization of courses within programs and more.
New Albany High School's $4.1 million renovation will include a more modern media center, community space outside the auditorium and relief to crowding in the lunchroom.
The last two projects will have construction going on while students are in the building. Snyder said while it's not the ideal situation, it can be done. Jeffersonville High School went through a significant construction project on campus a few years ago while students were still taking courses.
Following the start of those projects, Snyder said the timeline for projects is still fluid. He said in the summer of 2017, the district may begin work at Highland Hills Middle School, Floyds Knobs Elementary School and Greenville Elementary School could be next, but the administration's still working out the details. The rest of the projects slated will also be determined later.
Overall, he said they expect significant project completion in 2020. The tax impact from the referendum — expected to be about 21 cents per $100 of assessed valuation — won't likely show up on tax bills until 2018. But Snyder said there's a chance the tax impact could even go lower than that, depending on what happens when the district goes to sell the bonds on the market.
He said the district's property tax impact is expected to remain level with where it is now, so many property owners may not see a difference on their bills.
Connie Hynes, the parent teacher organization president at Highland HIlls Middle School, said she's glad to see the referendum pass and to see schools on the way to an equal playing field in quality.
"We’re very happy that it finally passed," Hynes said. "We feel like the schools in our district need to be as similar, as far as the space that each child has to learn, and we have disparity. Obviously we have big, beautiful schools in some places and in some, they’re very cruddy. We don’t think that’s fair. We’re all one school district and we need to make sure each child has the same opportunity to learn and because of that, we’re very happy."
FOR OTHER DISTRICTS
Two other school districts in region have wrestled with the idea of referenda in the last year. Greater Clark County Schools had an unsuccessful campaign last year with 75 percent of the voters in its boundaries opposing the measure last November.
West Clark Community Schools has gone through the motions with the idea, too. After planning on pursuing one, the district instead moved to approve $62.9 million in bonds without a referendum. A petition was signed by 500 community members stopped that process. If the district wants that money, it now has to take the measure to ballot.
Snyder said New Albany-Floyd County wasn't the only school district with a referendum on the table this election. Nine out of 10 construction and operating fund referenda for schools in the state passed on Nov. 8. Snyder said local districts should take that as a positive message for themselves.
"It can be done," Snyder said. "If you look at the larger picture on Tuesday, there were 10 school referenda measures across the state of Indiana and nine of them passed. I think with the passage of time, more and more communities are recognizing that it’s important to support their local schools. I think that’s what happened in Floyd County, they recognized the importance of having a quality school system. In the communities of Clark and others, I hope they can get that figured out."
Andrew Melin, superintendent at Greater Clark County Schools, said while they've got some movement on a few projects for their schools coming up, he's not sure if the board will take on a referendum just yet.
"I don’t know," Melin said." We’ve just gone through a board election and we have a few new faces on the board. We have some facility issues that we know need to be addressed right away and we need to entertain how we’re going to proceed there. A larger referendum, bigger than NA-FC’s was like ours, I think we learned a lot of lessons. I think it’s going to take a lot of work to figure out what we need to do moving forward and what it will look like."
He said he was happy to see New Albany-Floyd County's success, but Greater Clark has some thinking to do before it considers moving forward with another referendum.
"All of our stakeholders need to be invested and I think the lesson learned last time was that I took for granted that our community was better prepared and willing to support a referendum than was truly the case," Melin said. "I think as we look ahead to an of our facility issues, that’s key, how do our stakeholders fully get behind and support this? That takes time and that takes effort. I think we’re in a better place than we were a year ago, but I think we really need to look hard at what we need to do."
Chad Schenck, superintendent at West Clark Community Schools, didn't return phone calls as of press time.
Hynes said for New Albany-Floyd County schools, she recalls trips to school and seeing some of the conditions teachers, students and others were working in. While they kept at it, she's glad to see things are about to improve.
"It’s rough," Hynes said. "I think just getting a little bit of understanding from people, it wasn’t that difficult to get people understand that there really was a need."