September vote set on Greenwood school project

The Greenwood School District plans to spend between $10 million and $12 million on a new freshman center that would adjoin the Greenwood High School and alleviate crowding across the district, Superintendent John Ciesla said.

The Arkansas Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation Commission has approved $2.3 million in funding for the project, but the district will have to raise the rest through a bond issue, Ciesla said.

For the district to proceed, voter approval is required to raise the district's property tax by 1.9 mills, from 38.7 mills to 40.6 mills. The election will take place Sept. 16, Ciesla said.

If the millage increases, the owner of a home with a taxable value of $100,000 would pay $38 more in annual school property taxes, from $774 under the current 38.7 mills to $812 under 40.6 mills. A mill is one-tenth of a cent.

Ciesla would hope to begin construction in early 2015 and open a 50,000-square-foot wing for ninth-graders in fall 2016, he said. The wing would include 15 traditional classrooms, seven labs for workforce education or science classes, and four special services classrooms for programs such as special education, he said.

"We have for several years been pretty tight on classroom space," School Board President Todd Hales said. "It looks like our district's going to continue to grow. We came up with a plan to add classrooms onto our existing high school campus."

Much of the growth in the district has taken place in Chaffee Crossing, which stretches across portions of the Greenwood and Fort Smith school districts, Ciesla said. Greenwood is southeast of Fort Smith.

Chaffee Crossing encompasses 7,000 acres of former Fort Chaffee land that is being marketed for residential, commercial, industrial and recreational use by the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority. The Defense Department declared the land surplus in the 1990s as part of the military's Base Realignment and Closure program.

Greenwood's enrollment has grown by 468 students, from 3,128 in the 2001-02 school year to 3,596 students in 2013-14, Ciesla said. The district currently houses students in two kindergarten through fifth-grade campuses, one sixth- and seventh-grade campus, one eighth- and ninth-grade campus, and a 10th- through 12th-grade campus.

The addition of a ninth-grade-only campus would allow the district to move the fifth grade out of the elementary schools, Ciesla said. The district then would have two kindergarten through fourth-grade campuses, a fifth- and sixth-grade campus, a seventh- and eighth-grade campus, plus the ninth-grade campus and the 10th- through 12th-grade campus.

Ciesla said he hopes a ninth-grade center will assist ninth-graders in acclimating to high school. Ninth-graders would have access to some high school spaces, including the cafeteria and library media center, but primarily would attend classes in a separate wing of the high school.

Metro on 07/16/2014

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