PORTAGE, Mich. — Portage Community Schools has introduced an effort to inform voters about a bond request to swap or update elementary educational facilities.
If accredited through a distinctive election Aug. 3, residents will not see a tax raise from the $175.7 million bond proposal, in accordance to a information launch Wednesday.
The district needs to use the funds to do the subsequent:
- Switch five growing older elementary colleges – Amberly, Angling Street, Central, Haverhill and Woodland, all of which are amongst 53 to 61 a long time old
- Renovate Moorsbridge Elementary, which has a number of specific requires
- Invest in new, fuel-economical buses to replace more mature ones
- Obtain and update know-how
Portage General public Colleges
Portage General public Schools
Portage Public Schools
“We have a special possibility,” PPS Superintendent Mark Bielang claimed. “We can finish the activity of addressing critical facility requires, provide all of our educational facilities up to present day learning criteria and do it without raising taxes.”
In between completion of a past bond obligation, existing small curiosity costs and the district’s great economical ailment all round, the new bond would final result in zero millage maximize, according to Bielang.
The prepare is to construct all 5 of the new elementary universities on their existing websites.
The new Central Elementary will have a potential of 600 pupils, an increase from its present potential of 450 pupils.
The new Angling, Haverhill and Woodland elementary educational facilities would proceed to have a capability of 450 learners every single.
Amberly Elementary would keep on to have a ability of 600 students.
Escalating the capacity of Central Elementary and insignificant redistricting would eliminate overcrowding at Amberly, Moorsbridge and 12th Road elementary colleges.
Bielang says each individual college will supply “crucial” capabilities, which includes collaborative analyze area, modern technological innovation, enhanced protection and safety and electricity-effective energy, air flow, heating and cooling and air filtration.
These new educational facilities would also simplicity overcrowding and completely comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, as perfectly as attribute safer and far better-flowing fall-off area for buses and personal cars, district officers claimed.
“Education has changed above the past number of many years,” Bielang mentioned. “The thought of students sitting in rows of desks all day while a trainer lectures to them isn’t how it is completed. It is considerably extra collaborative now. College students do the job jointly in groups, just like in the actual environment. The demands are distinctive, expectations are various, so the instructional spaces have to have to reflect that.”
If accepted, the bond would cap a focused hard work by PPS – with group enter – to bring all educational facilities to modern-day finding out specifications.
“Over the a long time, we’ve achieved the demands of our substantial faculty learners, our center school pupils, and now it is time to address these older services that provide our elementary pupils,” Bielang claimed. “In addition to obtaining the ideal curriculum doable, we want to have amenities that meet up with our students’ wants.”
More info about the bond request can be found on the district’s web site listed here.
