NEW ALBANY — An $80 million plan to renovate and replace schools in Floyd County was defeated by more nearly 1,000 votes Tuesday.
The referendum to voluntarily raise taxes for building projects in the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corp. saw 4,724 people, or 55.5 percent voting “no” to 3,793 voting “yes,” or 44.5 percent.
“Obviously, we’re very disappointed,” said Brad Snyder, NA-FC deputy superintendent. “We wanted to support our kids and to be progressive with our county, but that’s not what the county wanted. We think we had a good plan, it was an appropriate plan, but the county just didn’t support public education today.”
Statutorily, the district has to wait one year before it can bring the question back to ballot. However, Snyder said he’s not sure what the district will do, noting it’s going to be more difficult to pass a referendum after one year of a steep tax drop-off following expiration of an existing school bond.
“I think we’ll need to take some time to do an autopsy and see what went wrong,” Snyder said. “Obviously, this is really hard work. Getting a vote passed in some trying times is just hard and the demographics are clearly not in our favor. We have a minority of parents with children in our schools registered to vote; public ed is just not favor right now and it’s really a hard, hard situation.”
Pete Palmer, president of pro-referendum PAC Families for Floyd County, said he was disappointed by the message sent by the county of no longer supporting public education in spite of having done so historically.
“I think their message is a lot of Floyd County people would rather have a couple hundred dollars in their pockets than better schools for the kids who need it most,” Palmer said. “I think it was a message that was received by the kids that that their old schools are good enough, and I’m very sad for them.”
The referendum would have funded a massive overhaul of the Prosser Career Education Center, new schools at Green Valley and Slate Run Elementary schools and substantial renovations at Floyds Knobs Elementary and Greenville Elementary schools.
The tax rate would have affected a home worth about $135,000 at about $292 annually. Now, that will go down to $181.37 per year.
Palmer said though his campaign didn’t work out for the referendum, he plans to keep his PAC active to support the school system in other ways.
“My PAC will not disband,” Palmer said. “The referendum was certainly the motivator because of the state laws on communication, but we’ll try to stay involved with the forefront of New Albany educational issues in the future.”
Joanna Danzl, president of Greenville Concerned Citizens Inc., which ran a campaign against the referendum, did not immediately return a phone call for comment.