Issaquah School Board supports its own bond issue
January 9, 2012
By Christopher Huber
If voters approve a new bond measure this spring, Skyline could get its long-awaited Spartan Stadium renovation and Sunny Hills Elementary School will get a total rebuild.
The Issaquah School District will ask district residents to do so this April. At its last meeting of 2011 on Dec. 14, the Issaquah School Board unanimously passed a resolution supporting a more than $219 million capital bond issue. If passed, the bond money will provide funding for various building projects and school upgrades around the district for the next eight years.
Other bonds are expiring, so district taxpayers are in for a tax cut. Without the bond, residents will see their tax rate drop to $4.05 per thousand dollars of assessed value. If the bond is approved, tax rates will go to $4.42 — meaning the bond represents essentially a 37 cent tax increase.
Besides major projects proposed for Sunny Hills, Skyline, Issaquah Valley Elementary School, Issaquah Middle School and Liberty High School, the bond measure will fund district-wide improvements on carpet ($1.5 million) and security systems ($4.8 million), among other projects.
If passed, the district will spend $27.11 million to rebuild Sunny Hills Elementary School, which currently has 11 of 31 classrooms meeting in portables, according to the board’s approved bond proposal. The Skyline stadium upgrade will receive nearly $6.5 million, among other smaller improvements to the school facility.
The district will spend $1.3 million to install an artificial turf football field and rubber track at Pine Lake Middle School and will also put $95,000 toward converting the school’s photography darkroom into a video lab, according to the bond document. Pacific Cascade Middle School will also get $1.3 million for a new football field and track.
The district would also spend $2.1 million at Beaver Lake Middle School to install a new football field and track, add a covered play area ($350,000) and replace the current vinyl wall covering ($165,000).
The bond will also help replace roofing, skylights and flooring at Endeavour Elementary School. Discovery Elementary School will get about $443,000 to replace skylights and flooring.
The board voted in October to put the question on the ballot. At that point, board member Chad Magendanz voted against the issue.
Magendanz, elected board president Dec. 14, said despite his earlier vote, the bond issue has his total support. Magendanz said his earlier “no” vote was the result of a procedural issue, that he felt the board should have put off the final vote on floating the bond until a later meeting.
Replacing departing board member Jan Colbrese, board member Anne Moore had been sworn into office just a short time before the vote on a resolution supporting the bond. But Moore noted she served on the bond committee that came up with the original bond proposal. With that in mind, she said she is very familiar with the bond issue and, despite her newness to the board, was very comfortable voting to support the bond.
Kelly Munn, of Sammamish, is a co-chairwoman of Volunteers for Issaquah Schools, which will run the bond campaign. The school board initially planned to put the bond issue on a February ballot. Munn said her committee began to meet weekly in August to discuss the bond measure.
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