DOVER — Superintendent Jerry Owens said the Dover School District’s board of education, which will meet on campus at 6 p.m. today, will discuss whether to hold a third election to increase the millage to build a middle school.
A 3.5-mill increase was narrowly defeated this year in a Feb. 1 special election. The measure lost by 38 votes.
That vote came after a 5.5-mill property-tax increase failed in the September 2013 school election.
The question now is whether to make a third attempt, and how much of an increase to propose.
“It hasn’t been totally decided,” Owens said. “We talked at the last board meeting, and what I shared with them was that the department of facilities had granted us an extension on our partnership funds, $4.4 million.”
The district was required to begin construction by August 2015 to use the money.
“We’re just now finishing up the lower-middle-school roof; that money had to be spent by August, so we went ahead and put a new roof on,” Owens said.
The district asked for an extension for the remainder of the grant, and it was approved.
“We’re going to have to use it by Nov. 1 of this year. We’re supposed to have a contract in hand, according to the rules and regs, so we had to get an extension,” he said.
“What the board is doing is two things: trying to get community input, ‘Do you support the millage for the new middle school?’
“Two, going back to the construction manager, … we need to confirm that our costs are still good,” Owens said.
The proposed middle school would cost “a little over $10 million. Again, these are estimates,” he said.
Owens said that from his standpoint, “most of the feedback has been positive: ‘We really need a middle school.’”
He said the first project failed, in his and the school board’s assessment, because of a proposed field house. “We took that off,” he said.
Owens said many patrons still thought the field house was part of the project during the second vote that failed.
“This strictly is a middle-school complex. [That’s] what we’re going for,” Owens said.
The project that would be funded by any property-tax increase would be 10 renovated classes at the lower middle school for fifth- through eighth-graders, and 26 classrooms added to the building, plus a 3,500-square-foot safe room and a physical-education facility.
“The existing middle school is outdated and just really not functional for our educational facility today,” Owens said. “On the middle school and our PE facility, the fire marshal has given us two years to bring it up to [Americans With Disabilities Act] compliance, and the dressing room, and we’ve had to close them off, nail them shut.”
The construction project would enable students, “for the most part,” he said, to stay under one roof to attend classes and go to lunch and PE.
Owens said after the last failed attempt that he wouldn’t give up because the building is needed, and it’s for “the safety of our kids.”
Construction on the project would have to begin by August 2015 for the district to receive the partnership funds, he said.
Owens said the board meeting, which is open to the public, will be held in the lower middle school at the south end of the football field.
“We feel like they’ll make a decision,” he said.
The earliest a special election could be held would be January, said Terry Granderson, assistant director of the Arkansas Department of Education Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.