Silo superintendent discusses school bond

Residents in the Silo School District will be voting on a bond proposition Feb. 13 school Superintendent Kate McDonald says is much needed to keep up with growth.

It is a $35,545,000 bond proposition to fund construction, furnishing, equipping and/or acquiring an early childhood classroom, a lagoon, a high school with safe room plus remodeling school buildings and obtaining furniture and fixtures, according to a sample ballot.

According to a “fact sheet” by the school district, the bond will fund the following: - High school with cafeteria inside the commons area including three safe classrooms.

- Additional two classrooms added to early childhood.

- Construction of additional lagoon waste system.

The school district said the bond will result in an 11-percent increase in current property taxes.

During a recent public meeting, Superintendent McDonald said the children represent the future.

“They’re the ones that are going to make this county go,” she said. “They’re the ones that are going to make the state go and the nation, so we’ve got to be out there and we’ve got to do things to support our children and give them the best start that we possibly can.”

She said the bond will allow the school district to construct a high school with a cafeteria and three classrooms which will also be safe rooms.

“As you know, we are kind of the community hub for safety,” McDonald said. “Our music room is our safe room. When we built our early childhood, the multi-purpose room is a safe room because we have went over the amount of people we could put in that safe room.

“Now, do we operate after school hours as the tornado shelter? Absolutely, that’s open every time we have bad weather. We’re overrunning now, we need more.”

She said the building will be more than 34,000 square feet with 14 classrooms.

“We will have an office set up in there that will have a safe entryway like we had with our early childhood when we built that and then we added on to our other building with that same bond,” McDonald said. “We will also be adding two classrooms to our early childhood. Most of you know, we opened the doors of our early childhood in 2019. At that time, we only had on our campus 989 students. January 3 when we came back from Christmas break, we had 1,224 students. So we had an almost 25- percent gain in just that short of time in students. So, when we had the idea of building the early childhood, 22 classrooms was a lot. It was going to be the most that we have had in a building on campus and so we looked at businesses that were coming to the area. We looked at housing that was coming into the area. Not only did we add 22 classrooms but that freed up classrooms throughout our elementary whether it be in the old elementary building or over here in our extension buildings that had been here.

“So, that was quite a bit of growth but we have surpassed that with our student population. Right now, our teachers’ workroom is a classroom. The computer lab is a classroom. We had storage areas, office areas. They’re all classrooms so they need that additional space in there because the people that are coming to the district, they have young children and they’re blowing the doors off the elementary. Where once a grade of 60 was large for Silo, we have grades that are 112, 115 and that’s not stopping.”

The bond will also fund the construction of an additional lagoon waste system.

”Most of our major buildings at Silo are on a lagoon system and if you drive by the side of the early childhood, just by the baseball field, there is a three-cell lagoon,” McDonald said. “We have to get that updated regardless of what happens here, and that’s not cheap. With the number of students that we have, we have to provide a lagoon system that’s going to meet DEQ qualifications.”

She said that when the early childhood facility was built, the school met the specifications at the time, but DEQ said the next time a building is constructed, more lagoons will have to be added.

“So, we have to meet the specifications of DEQ regardless,” McDonald said.

McDonald said the property tax increase will be 11 percent for this bond.

“Now, our last bond was also 11 percent that we passed for the early childhood,” she said. “Now that is an 11 percent increase of what you’re paying right now. So if you pay $100 in property tax, the bond passes, your property taxes will be $111. That over 12 months is 92 cents a month. If you pay $1,000 in property tax, after the bond passes, you’re going to pay $1,110. Over the span of 12 months, that equals out to $9.17 a month.”

To make up for the increase in property taxes, McDonald said that her husband and herself like HTeaO tea, and they will cut back.

“So for us, that’s going to be a day we don’t go get a tea and we’ll have our property taxes paid for that month,” she said. “I mean when I bring it down to something simple like that, there’s a lot of little things we’ll pay $9 for that is gone in 30 seconds. This is something, it’s not going anywhere. That $9 a month that you’re going to save, it’s for our kids.”

She said the last bond that did not pass was a 20-percent increase. McDonald has been asked why this bond is only 11 percent.

“The reason why it’s only 11 percent now is because we had a huge growth in the district between when we ran that bond and where we’re running a bond now,” McDonald said.

According to McDonald, the area has grown from $55 million in property taxes to a little more than $80 million.

“So, that disperses the tax burden across more property owners,” she said.

McDonald said the bad part of it is that they can’t obtain as much material because costs have gone up.

“We can’t worry about it,” she said. “We didn’t pass the last one. We could have had everything. We’re going to get what we can get now because we have no choice, guys. The time is now. We’re at a critical mass.”

She said more than 1,200 students were enrolled as of Jan. 3 and when she came to Silo in 2009, there were about 600 students.

“We have more than doubled since then and the only thing we have been able to do is pass one bond,” McDonald said. “We tried and tried and tried. I know it was hard here because there was zero mills on the books at Silo. For 20 years, no bond would pass. They kept getting voted down and the reason why is because people didn’t want to raise their taxes. There’s a lot of disconnect between this community and the school because we don’t have a downtown.

“We could be the community for our kids right now. For a school our size, were not where we should be on property tax mills that come to the school. We’re in the middle of the road in the county even though we’re the second largest school in the county. We’re in the middle by quite a bit.

“This is a step in the right direction for our kids, for the growth of the school and for the betterment of this whole community because if the school is doing well, that’s going to be great for your property value as well.”

According to McDonald, cafeteria space needs to be expanded and some of the students are finishing their lunch at 2:10 p.m. because they have to stagger lunch times.

“If we have two cafeterias, we can have a spot for our older kids to eat, our junior high kids could eat over there and then we could let this place actually take a break because right now, it is max capacity all the time,” McDonald said.

She said industry in the region is what is driving the growth of Silo’s student population and the only way to keep up is to pass a bond.

“That’s the only way schools are set up to do anything signifi cant with their money,” McDonald said. “They have to have a bond passed.”

She said the bond for the early childhood facility will roll off in 2033, and if this bond passes, it will end in 2043.

“It’s staggered out a little bit longer so we can have the money that we need to build what we need today,” McDonald said. “We’re looking for every way that we can to expand. We don’t want to be the school that has to bring in portable building after portable building because those are a problem. We had one that’s sitting out in front of our school. Right there in front of everybody and that has been something we had to put money into over and over again to get it where it looks like today.”

She said the largest class right now is kindergarten which has 113 and there are more than 100 fourth graders.

McDonald said a construction manager told her that he is building a group of 300 houses south of the highway.

“They’re going in everywhere and they’re not going to stop so we have to be prepared for that growth,” she said.

A 60-percent “super majority” is required for the bond to pass.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 13.