Schools

Ferndale Superintendent Discusses $22.8 Million School Improvement Bond with Parents

The Ferndale Board of Education will decide Monday whether the bond proposal will be on a February ballot.

On Monday, the Ferndale Public Schools Board of Education will decide whether a .

The bond will go toward infrastructure improvements for the 10 school buildings, including districtwide technology projects.

Ferndale Superintendent Gary Meier met with parents last week during the first two of several community meetings in the school district.

Find out what's happening in Ferndalewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

He is also meeting with them to discuss the elementary program parent survey. (Read about this later this afternoon.)

Last Wednesday, nearly 20 parents came out to to hear what Meier had to say.

Find out what's happening in Ferndalewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The projects and improvements he discussed were all part of the $22.8 million bond issue (view the PDF attached to this story for a list of the bond projects). However, Meier made it clear that as superintendent, he cannot say whether to vote or not vote for the bond issue. "It's my job to make recommendations to the board, the board then makes the decision (on what to do with those recommendations), and it really is the community's responsibility to vote and to ask their friends and neighbors to vote for the issue," Meier said.

He has said that if the Board of Education decides to put it on the ballot, there will be a community group that will run a campaign to educate those in the district about the projects and the improvements in the bond issue.

The campaign, he emphasized, is not an extension of the district. "It is illegal to use public money to (campaign) for an issue," he said.

The bond projects

The $22.8 million bond includes projects at each of the district's buildings, including several technology upgrades.

During the summer, , including some members from that committee as well as district parents and Ferndale residents. The subcommittee, which met for three months, first decided whether the district should pursue a bond and then determined what the district would pursue in said bond. .

The biggest items on the bond include the removal of asbestos throughout , FHS auditorium upgrades, the construction of kitchen facilities at and , and several mechanical upgrades. More than half of the bond, $14.4 million, would go toward various projects in the high school.

"The key thing is that more than half of the improvements (of the bond projects) are at the high school," Meier said. "Every student experiences that building. This building, ultimately, needs to survive for the long haul."

Adding kitchens to Roosevelt and UHS, he said, brings equity to district buildings. Roosevelt currently has food taken to the students. The building has an old locker room off the gym where it can store dry goods. "This simply creates equity in food service," Meier said.

The asbestos — at $5.2 million, one of the most costly projects in the bond — runs pretty much throughout the high school, except for the newer science wing. Though the asbestos is contained at present, when there is an issue that requires replacing of ceiling tiles — say, from water damage — the expenses associated with abating these specific areas become costly, Meier said.

As an example, he cited a water leak in a restroom that damaged several ceiling tiles. The project cost $20,000, Meier said, because the district had to hire a company to abate the asbestos before the ceiling could be repaired. With asbestos completely abated, this same project would cost a fraction of $20,000, he said. "Those ceiling tiles only cost $10," Meier said. "The cost of that project is tied up in the abatement of the asbestos."

Additionally, about $3.3 million of the bond issue is designated for technology. This includes smart boards and other instructional upgrades as well as the infrastructure to implement these projects.

The taxes

If the bond is placed on a February ballot and is passed by voters, it will extend the life of a current bond for 20 more years. The bond currently on the books is set to run out in 2024, and it's a 7-mill bond. So taxes, based on the bond passing, wouldn't go up, Meier said. The difference, however, is that a homeowner would have to pay the 7-mill levy longer with the extension.

But he said districts pay for large projects this way instead of spending out of the school's general fund, which Meier said would cut into the district's programs and instructional services.

"I can't think of a school district that would be able to do a projects of this scope out of a general fund," Meier said. "For the most part, capital improvements are done through bonds. And the scope of our needs are too big (to fund out of the general fund)."

The other bonds

The district voted for a $47 million fund in 1995. Some of the projects on the 1995 issue included tearing down and rebuilding Coolidge Intermediate School, plus upgrades to Roosevelt Primary and John F. Kennedy School.

Since Meier has been superintendent at Ferndale, he has attempted two bonds: one in 2003 and one in 2004. The 2003 bond failed because, he said, there may not have been enough time to get the information into the community. In 2004, however, it passed.

A parent at Wednesday's meeting asked what the differences between the two bonds were and why the 2004 bond passed. Meier said the changes to the bonds were negligible but said he attributes the success of the 2004 bond to the continuing work and conversation that came out of the 2003 failure.

"They just keep working," he said.

The '04 bond passed with 72 percent of the votes. It was a $15.5 million bond that upgraded cosmetic and infrastructural aspects of the buildings, including gym floor replacement and other renovations to the gymnasium, auditorium seating replacements, the addition of a dance room and installation of a synthetic field for activities.

Meier is characterizing the bond issue as completing the work that wasn't part of the 1995 bond. That bond originally identified nearly $80 million in school projects. "Some of the work identified was not able to get done," he said of the nearly $33 million of projects not on the 1995 bond.

Read about the district's 2004 bond here.


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