Scot Graden, superintendent of the Saline Area Schools, took nothing for granted when the district decided to ask voters last fall to pay more taxes to help finance $67.5 million in school improvements.
It had been fifteen years since voters in the Saline district approved a school tax increase. That one helped pay for a new high school and elementary school. But after the ruinous 2008 real estate crash, voters rejected back-to-back school bond proposals in 2010 and 2011.
In the weeks leading to the November vote, Graden and other school leaders fanned out across the district to explain how the infusion of new tax dollars would be used to bolster building safety and security, implement energy and infrastructure projects, and ensure “future-ready” schools and students.
“I think we did similar communication in the past, in 2010 and 2011, but we did more of it this time,” says Graden, Saline’s superintendent since 2008. “And I do feel like there was a greater sense of urgency around the issues than there was maybe in the past.”
Those efforts paid off. Sixty-two percent of the district’s voters approved a one-mill increase for a twenty-year, $67.5 million bond issue, to be added to the district’s seven-mill tax rate to pay off previous bonds. A mill is equivalent to one dollar of tax for every $1,000 of taxable property value; an extra mill adds $100 in taxes annually for a home with a taxable value of $100,000. District homeowners will see larger school tax bills starting this summer.
“It passed overwhelmingly, and the turnout was actually higher than I thought it was going to be,” says Graden. “Typically, that would be bad in a bond issue, and it actually was even better.”
The first $40.5 million in bonds were sold in February at an interest rate of 3.2 percent, significantly better than the original budgeted projection of 4.75 percent. Graden said the lower rate will save the schools some $10 million in interest payments over the twenty-year term of the bonds. The remaining bonds will be sold in 2019 and 2022–$13.5 million in each year.
Once school is out, construction will begin in earnest. About $14 million in projects this summer include reconfiguring bus and car lanes and some parking lots at Heritage and Woodland Meadows elementary schools, which share a campus. All four elementary schools and the middle school will get secure vestibules so office staff can better control access during school hours. A secure vestibule for the high school will be constructed next year.
The breakdown for spending the bond money: $20.2 million on infrastructure, including new roofs, parking, and campus roads; $12.9 million on energy, such as LED lighting, furnaces, and air conditioning; $10.2 million on technology; $8.4 million safety and security features, to be completed this summer and next; $5.2 million in equipment; $3 million on buses; and $2.4 million on curriculum.
At the district’s invitation, an outside facilitator in January conducted three different focus groups representing a cross-section of parents, staff, and community members with no school-age children. There are fewer than 5,300 students in the Saline schools, a student population that Graden describes as being “very flat for the last three years.”
The focus group objective, Graden says, was to “find out what type of information do they want from the schools” as the work paid for by bond dollars progresses and how they prefer receiving that information. Among those attending, the top preferred methods of receiving such information were TheSalinePost.com, an online news site about Saline; email; and the school website.
“They did ask that as we begin construction that they have a website where they can go and check out progress,” Graden says. To that end, the district will repurpose its bond.salineschools.org website, which was dedicated to the bond issue before the vote. The new website will be up around June 1, about three weeks before construction begins.
A confluence of factors may have influenced voter sentiment last November in Saline, including national headlines over school safety and security issues, a strengthening state economy, and a financially healthier school district.
In 2011, there was a “we can’t afford it” campaign opposing the bond issue after several years of state funding cutbacks that forced the district to draw down its general fund balance, recalls Tim Austin, vice president of the Saline Board of Education, who took office in January 2015.
He moved back into the district in 2012, and so didn’t vote in 2011, but he believed the district needed to more firmly demonstrate good financial stewardship. “Now the district is moving in the right direction,” Austin says. “Our fund balance this year will probably be just shy of 7 percent, so it’s as high as it’s been in a long, long time.”
With the district’s financial house in order, it was up to school leaders to explain why the district needed the money. Graden acknowledges that an improved economy and stabilized school finances were important factors in the election.
Graden says most of the community and parents could easily get behind making improvements to keep students safe, warm, and dry, but they also wanted to know how the tax increase would improve education. The answer: by getting the schools and students “future ready,” with technology and innovative learning.
“When presented with clear information,” Graden says, “I think our community values education. They’ve proven it time and again.”
With school improvements under way, there will be several leadership changes at some Saline schools, starting July 1. Middle school principal David Raft will take over as the new principal at the high school as Julie Helber leaves to become superintendent of the Chelsea School District. Pleasant Ridge Elementary principal Brad Bezeau will take over at the middle school. The Pleasant Ridge principal’s job was posted in early May.
