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Show Special election to decide fate of J new high school By SCOTT SUMMERILL F ARMINGTON-Da v is County residents will make the final decision deci-sion on whether to bond $40 million for a new high school and improvements im-provements on existing schools at a special election May 8. If the bond is approved by voters, construction on the high school, which is slated to use about $27 million of the bond money, will begin as scon as a site is chosen. Officials have indicated the location of the new school will be somewhere in the North Davis area, probably between Clearfield and Davis high schools. School district officials have been stressing major growth in school enrollment as justification for the new facility, and projections indicate the trend will continue into the next century. Officials are also planning to shift school boundaries to help relieve some of the overcrowding. Though exact lines have not been drawn yet, the objective will be to take students from Clearfield, Layton and Davis high schoola, which are dramatically overcrowded, overcrowd-ed, and shift them to less populated schools such as Woods Cross and Bountiful high schools. The district has already enacted the 2 mill levy allowed by the last session of the Utah Legislature to help fund programs like the boundary boun-dary shift that are aimed at reducing class size. Some of the other programs pro-grams being considered by the board to alleviate congested classrooms are year-round class, alternative education programs at DAVC and voluntary early graduation. gradua-tion. In addition, part of the money is earmarked for wages for some 70 new teachers. District officials are confident of the outcome of the May 8 election. So far, they have hired an architectural architec-tural firm to start drawing up plans for the school, hired a project manager to coordinate construction and have been looking at possible building sites. |