Officials at Tinley Park School District 146 are putting together a game plan to win voter support for a bond issue to build a new middle school.
School officials plan to launch a campaign within the next several months to try to get the community behind the proposed $20 million middle school construction project.
The campaign, which will include setting up a community-based committee, comes after the school board voted last week to put a $20 million bond proposal on the November ballot. One of the main questions is whether the referendum question should include a tax increase.
The school board hired a financial company to help work out the best way to repay the bonds. Supt. Gerald Hill said the district is looking at two main options: increasing taxes to help pay off the new debt or using the current tax levy to pay it off more slowly.
“We’re running all the numbers to see which option works best,” he said. “Then we will present all this information to the community-based committee. We plan to show voters what our needs are and then explain to them how we would pay for what we need.
“Our school board believes it’s only logical that the community should be involved in the campaign and the planning. We want and we need their support.”
Administrators say a new middle school is needed to ease overcrowding in a district that has seen its population swell during the last decade. The district has about 400 students it never planned for, and, with Tinley Park’s expanding population, that number will increase.
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Despite the growth, District 146 has not built a school in a quarter-century.
The proposal calls for constructing a school for 6th-, 7th- and 8th-grade students. The district’s current middle school houses 7th and 8th graders. The new school would provide more classroom space for middle school students and free at least three classrooms in four of the district’s five elementary schools, Hill said.
Officials have not yet selected a site for the new middle school.
With their proposal, District 146 officials join a growing list of south and southwest suburban school officials asking voters to approve new construction projects. In the past year, a dozen area schools have held construction-related bond referendums.
The proliferation of referendums can be tied to the state’s plans to hand out $200 million in matching construction grant money. To be eligible for the state funds, school districts must convince voters to approve bond issues. District 146 officials already have applied for a $4.2 million state grant.
School officials have spent the last 18 months researching several methods to ease overcrowding, including expanding all six existing schools or building a new middle school for 7th and 8th graders only. But they decided on the most expensive option of building a middle school for 6th, 7th and 8th graders.
“We did an extensive analysis of current thinking of middle schools and moving to the 6th, 7th and 8th middle school is deemed to be a very sound educational approach,” Hill said.