White says. “If we can prioritize and can achieve some good things, that’s better than just shoving down the community’s throat a huge, comprehensive plan at one time.”
Like Moore and White, Stoutamyer agrees that the board should first fund Option B’s most-needed items, but remains committed to completing the entire plan. Rehabilitating the three high schools and creating a magnet high school will give students an educational advantage, he says, but it will also keep current residents in Springfield, as well as attract new residents and businesses to the area.
“I don’t want to cut any part of this project short,” Stoutamyer says. “If it’s going to take a number of years to get it done, where we’d have to pay down some debt before we start on the next project, I still think that Option B is on the table for me. We voted on it, and it’s exactly what I think needs to happen for our city.”
Looby offers a different perspective than other school board members, saying that prioritizing within Option B will waste too much time. Even if the sales tax increase was approved and the board agreed on how to prioritize, he says, it would be a few years before revenues could be used to purchase bonds — a financial option that permits borrowing money on the promise of future revenues — and construction could begin. It would be even longer before the district could begin the second and third round of projects.
“I don’t want to go back to my sub-district and tell them that some of these projects won’t get done for 20 or 30 years,” he says.
The most responsible option, Looby contends, would be to scale back Option B and commit to shorter-term projects that can be finished in the next few years.
“It’s a nice dream to completely gut and redo two schools and to significantly expand a third,” Looby says, “but I think in terms of real pragmatic attainability, I’m looking at something where we would go in and target what we can do in these high schools and what the community will buy into.”
Dan Mulcahy, of Dankor Development Co., was one of three members of the facilities study committee who voted against recommending Option B to the district. He opposes moving SHS from its present location, namely because its proposed west-side site is surrounded by other school districts. For example, he explains, students who live in Panther Creek attend Chatham, while students west of Koke Mill and north of Old Jacksonville Road attend Pleasant Plains.
“By moving SHS six or seven miles west,” Mulcahy says, “and putting it close to the Pleasant Plains and Chatham school districts’ boundaries, I see no educational benefit to the students.”
Mulcahy also opposes a sales tax increase, he says, since school districts surrounding Springfield represent 51 percent of the county and would receive a proportionate amount of the generated revenues.
He explains: “Why would you vote to have a sales tax increase, allowing your competitor, the other schools around, an advantage to reduce their property taxes, pay off their notes, expand and build more schools, [to continue] dragging our students and families out of Springfield?” Mulcahy proposed to the school board in November 2008 a project that would redevelop the three high schools, keeping SHS at its current location, through a $100 million lease-purchase option.
Contact Amanda Robert at [email protected].
