THE DALLES — The North Wasco County School District 21 has been working with staff, community members, parents and students in a Community Advisory Committee (CAC) to gather input and prepare a potential school bond measure.
Between September through January, the CAC met five times with the Bond leadership team — consisting of district Superintendent Carolyn Bernal, School Board Chair Jose Aparicio, Chief Financial Officer Kara Flath, and District Communications officer Stephanie Bowen, as well as consultants from OSPIS, a Portland-based architectural firm hired by the district to facilitate the bond planning process.
“We have come to a consensus for a proposed single building bond measure, a high school replacement,” Bernal said in the superintendent’s report during Jan. 26 School board meeting, “We are looking to bring something forward for the board to adopt in June, for a measure to go before the community in November.”
While the final bond amount has yet to be finalized, the proposed measure consists of a ‘base package’ of $120 million dollars, which would allow the construction of a new high school building on the east side of the Wahtonka campus, an area which is currently field space. As is, the package would not include improvements in areas such as athletics facilities, Career Technical Education (CTE) or capacity expansion, but in the final CAC meeting held on Jan. 10, committee members worked in small groups to perform a ‘build-a-bond’ exercise, in which, according to Bowen, members were given cards with such improvements and upgrades with their approximate costs, and worked to decide what they felt would be important to add on to the initial package, including the potential demolition of the old Wahtonka School building.
“Committee members were able to select various cards with potential upgrades or add-ons to add to the base package,” said Bowen in an email to Columbia Gorge News, “each element had an approximate cost attributed, so committee members could visualize the associated cost to the total project.”
According to Bowen, OPSIS is utilizing the feedback from those small groups to determine the final amount of the bond measure and whether it will remain at the base amount of $120 million, or increase to $140 million to allow for additional upgrades.
According to the CAC meeting four presentation, the yearly operations rate of North Wasco County School District without a bond construction rate currently sits at 5.24. A bond construction rate of $120 million would add a 2.67 increase for a total of $7.91 total tax rate, while a $140 million package would add a 3.12 increase for a $8.36 total tax rate.
According to Bowen, while public input regarding the bond package itself is concluding with the closing of the formal community bond planning committee, the public will still have the opportunity to offer input throughout the year.
“We will still have multiple opportunities for the public to visit our High School, ask questions, and give feedback throughout the year,” said Bowen, “I do want to give a shout out to our Bond Planning Group, which has been an incredible group of individuals who have dedicated themselves to this process over the last year.
As an open application to the community, we ended up with over fifty people consisting of parents and families, business owners, community partners, retired teachers and students who came together to work through this process to help guide the future of D21, and for that we want to give them each a big thank you.”
For more information and details on the bond planning process, community members can visit the NWCSD website and click on Blond planning page under the ‘About us’ tab.
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