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Show Bond issue boils down ?o '3Bi investment in our Eiids' After all is said and done "it all boils down to an investment in our kids which is beneficial to everyone," said Superintendent Phil Ellis concerning the upcoming school bond election. The Uintah School District is proposing propos-ing to bond for no more than $17 million for a new high school and equipping it and renovating Uintah High School for 8th and 9th graders. The board of education educa-tion is seeking public approval of the bond Feb. 22. In the last fifteen years the school board has had three bond elections. A bond for $1,750,000 was approved in 1969, but the last two bond elections for $7.5 million in 1977 and $10 million in 1980 were not approved by patrons of the community. Superintendent Ellis, who was with the Uintah School District during the other bond elections, says that the main difference dif-ference of the proposed bond and those in the past, is now the need is more critical. "The need to bond is based on actual count of students now in our schools," Ellis said. By moving the same number of students, presently attending schools in the district to the grades they would be in three years, district staff members predict a great influx in the high school from the junior high and a larger influx from the elementaries to the junior high levels. January 1983 enrollment figures show 1,388 in grades 7 - 9. With 228 students attending at-tending West Junior High, there are 1,160 in grades 7, 8 and 9 in Ashley Valley. In three years, when these students are in high school, some alternative measure will have to implemented to accom-, modate the students at Uintah High School, present capacity about 875. Ellis said that a report by the Utah Taxpayers Association that alleges that the Uintah School District has a 43 percent per-cent dropout rate is misleading. The report is based on the number of ninth graders graduating compared to high school graduation figures. "They didn't take into consideration move-ins and move-outs," Ellis said. A more accurate figure for dropouts in the district from ninth grade to graduation gradua-tion from high school was released from the Utah State School Board Office. It lists the Uintah District dropout rate from 1977-78 through 1980-81 as 3.83 percent per-cent or 88 students. The major cause of the dropouts are young women getting married before they graduate, Ellis said. Programs such as Young Mothers, 17 students presently enrolled, and Alter native High School, 41 enrolled, are helping help-ing more students graduate. Details concerning the bond election are being discussed by local PTA meetings this week. The two meetings are Wednesday at the Naples Elementary Elemen-tary School at 7:30 p.m. and Thursday at the Maeser school at 7:30 p.m. According to John Robbins, coordinator of the meetings, both meetings are open to the public even though they aren't PTA members. To answer some of the basic questions concerning the bond election, district staff members have compiled a list of questions and answers. Some of the most pertinent questions are: 1. Why not just add on? Because of the narrow hallways, and the congestion problems caused by two previous additions onto a structure which was orginally built for 500, it would be necessary to build the needed spaces in one or two separate buildings. Whether the addition was tacked on, or whether additional buildings were built, the cost would be considerable. Also, a new middle mid-dle school would be required at an additional, addi-tional, considerable cost to handle the overload of students which would still exist ex-ist at the junior high. 2. Why not "pay as you go?" The "pay as you go" program allows the district to raise approximately $2.1 million each year with a 9 mill levy for the Capital Outlay Fund. This fund is for land, buildings, remodeling and equipment. equip-ment. It would take approximately eight years to accumulate the $17 million. During Dur-ing this 8-year period, no new equipment, remodeling or building would go on unless property taxes were increased. 3. What if the bond fails? If the bond fails, we will continue to do our very best to provide quality education educa-tion for the students in our district. However, we will need to look at other options in order to accommodate the increased in-creased enrollment in our district, double dou-ble sessions, year-round schools, or extended ex-tended day schedules. The options will be carefully reviewed by the Board of Education, administrators and teachers, and will be in the best interest of the students of our district. 4. Where does your information come from that the high school will be overcrowded in three years? We have used five basic ways of trying try-ing to determine the estimated growth expected in the Uintah County School District: figures from the Utah State Planning Office, data from Utah State Office of Education, Uintah County Planning Plan-ning Office, District population census and growth projection figures and present pre-sent population of students by grade. 5. Is the present space being used us-ed well? We try to follow the state's recommended recom-mended footage per student to assigning students to individual schools. At the present pre-sent time, Vernal Junior High, Todd Elementary, Naples Elementary and the Learning Center exceed this standard. (All elementaries would have exceeded this standard if the sixth grade would have remained in the elementary schools.) 6. How are you anticipating "boom and then bust" cycles in your planning? One of the characteristics of energy development communities is a large, Continued on Page 2 Bond... Continued from Page 1 rapid increase of population followed by declining population. Using the variety of data sources available to the district, the district has projected up and down cycles in the student population. While these cycles provide some frustration in planning, it has been possible to arrive at a reasonable estimate of the expected steady state that the student population would approximately double by 1995. |