Wonderview schools to seek 6.9-mill increase

HATTIEVILLE — Patrons will be asked to approve a 6.9-mill property-tax increase in the September school election to fund a $12.3 million construction project for the Wonderview School District.

Wonderview Superintendent Carroll Purtle said the board unanimously voted at a special meeting Monday night to go forward with a project that includes classroom additions, remodeling and construction of a 1,200-seat gymnasium.

The gym is estimated to cost $5.6 million.

“Most of what we’re trying to do is on the academic side,” Purtle said.

If adopted, the millage rate would increase from 36.2 to 43.1 for the 425-student district. It would cost someone who owns a $100,000 home an additional $138 per year in property taxes.

The proposed construction project includes the following:

• Preschool — Purtle said the board opted to add a third classroom to the preschool, which is in a former residence near the baseball/softball complex, instead of building another facility. The estimated cost is $560,000.

“We could save $1.5 million by remodeling and taking care of some ills at the existing preschool and going ahead and adding a preschool room,” he said. The ABC Preschool and Title I programs are for 3- and 4-year-olds. The existing building will be remodeled, and the basement has to be restructured.

• Elementary school — The facility, which includes two wings, will be remodeled to add two science labs — one for upper-elementary students (grades 4-6) and one for lower-elementary students (K-3). He said new state education standards in science require that elementary students spend 20 percent of their time doing hands-on science activities, Purtle said, which he said would be more difficult to do in a typical classroom. He said “very few” school districts have science labs in elementary schools. Purtle, who is starting his fifth year in the district, said the two buildings were united by a secure entrance in a previous construction project.

• High school — An estimated $1.25 million will go toward construction of a two-classroom addition to replace two portable classrooms that will be torn down, Purtle said.

Also included will be a computer-study area to house approximately 60 computers “in carousel form,” to teach students how to work in teams, and a space for distance learning, as well as a room for computer technology.

“We can do robotics in there, whatever it is we need to do,” he said. “All of our kids, no matter what they go into now, have to have as much computer technology as we can get in their hands.” The addition will include a storage area.

• Bus-maintenance facility — The current facility will be razed and another one constructed at an estimated cost of $500,000, Purtle said. He said the current facility is a 1936 former agriculture building. “It’s more than out-used its usefulness,” he said.

The new facility will have two bays for school buses and an area for maintenance, tools and extra parts, as well as an area where employees can “eat lunch or get out of the cold or rain,” plus bathrooms.

“We’re going to build a side roof off that where they can pull the buses up and fuel the buses out of the rain and protect the fuel tanks from rain and sleet and snow.”

• Gymnasium — After the bus garage is built and the old one is torn down, work will start on the gymnasium on that site, the superintendent said.

A 1,200-seat gymnasium would cost an estimated $5.6 million. Purtle said the square footage would depend on the design. “We haven’t settled on everything yet,” he said. “A lot of people wanted the Taj Mahal for a gymnasium,” Purtle said, with up to 1,800 seats. He said that to fund such a facility, the district would have had to ask for a bigger millage increase.

“We looked at what it would take if we remodeled the old gym, and to bring it up to code would be … right at $3 million — to build new, a little better than $5 million,” he said.

The current gymnasium would still be utilized for physical education, public events such as the annual Harvest Festival, and peewee basketball, Purtle said.

• Athletic complex completion — An estimated $715,000 would go toward finishing the athletic complex, including adding lighting on the softball and baseball fields and track; paving the gravel track and improving drainage, which at $350,000 is almost half the cost; and installing a sound system and a press box on an elevated platform and a ticket booth so track meets can be held at the school, he said.

Also, the millage proposal includes $125,000 for demolition of the bus garage, as well as to rent temporary classrooms while the elementary school is being remodeled. He said $100,000 is built into the proposal for “contingency costs,” including additional printing, surveys, soil samples, etc.

The district is using Lewis Architects Engineers of Little Rock for the projects.

“What we hope to do if voters will approve this, we’ll get bonds sold at the earliest possible moment,” Purtle said. “Right now, bond prices are low.”

Board President Tom Nelson of Cleveland said the board considered several proposals before it approved the 6.9-mill option at Monday’s meeting.

“Part of the reason what we went for [Monday], a lot of people have complained about our gym over the years, and it’s getting some age on it. That’s one of the things we want to address,” Nelson said.

“It seems like on this whole issue, it’s almost been everywhere, from people wanting a gym that we can hold a state tournament in all the way down to nothing. … We think we’ve come up with a plan everyone can get on board with,” he said. “Now is the time to borrow money; I don’t know if the rates are going to be

any lower.”

The 6.9-mill proposal is “something we’ve tossed around quite a bit,” he said. “I think it’s more doable than what we had originally when [the architects] proposed everything; I think it was 11-something mills,” he said. “It was a bigger gym and a few fancier things, and we’ve kind of worked with them and trimmed some things out.”

Nelson said enrollment is up in the elementary school, “and it’s going to catch up

to us.”

“We’ve been wanting to add to our preschool program,” Nelson said. The classroom additions are needed, as well as the science labs and the computer lab at the high school, he said.

Nelson said part of the board’s discussion was to do the classroom upgrades and not build a gymnasium at all.

“We’re going to approach the point where we have to do something — upgrade the old gym or build a new one,” he said. The cost to upgrade the old gym “is over half of what a new one will cost,” so Nelson said board members believe that building one is the right approach.

Purtle said he is confident the public will approve the millage proposal.

“We haven’t ever had much of a problem with people doing what the kids are going to need,” he said. Purtle said people in the rural communities that form the district “see we bring everything toward

the kids.”

Nelson agreed: “We’ve always had a lot of support from the patrons, and this time, in some people’s opinion, we’re asking for a lot, and I suppose we are, and it’s a lot of things we need to do to upgrade,”

he said.

Elementary-school Parent-Teacher Organization President Shawna DuVall, who also teaches kindergarten, said she and her husband, Brent, are both excited about the millage.

They have three children — an eighth-grader, a third-grader and a second-grader.

“My thoughts on the millage would be it’s something we desperately need at Wonderview,” she said. “We’re definitely for it, and we think it would be something that would greatly benefit our school.”

As a parent of a daughter who plays basketball, DuVall said a new gymnasium would be nice.

“Our gym is definitely in need of renovations; I know they’re wanting to build a brand-new one. We’re one of the only gyms around that currently is not air-conditioned,” she said.

DuVall said she worries about her daughter and the other players getting overheated when they go back to school in August.

“I would love to see a brand-new gym,” she said

“As a teacher, as far as the science labs and getting all that — we did get a grant for some new science materials, and it will definitely be nice to have somewhere to utilize and have somewhere to put all this stuff in action.”

Purtle said the district has sent newsletters via email to parents and has posted information on the district’s Facebook page seeking input on the proposal. He said public hearings will be held before the Sept. 20 school election to get patrons’ input on the proposed projects.

“We maintain high expectations of the kids,” he said. “What we ask is for the community to continue to have high expectations for us to continue to provide more for the kids.”

He said the district’s test scores last year ranked 51 out of 237 Arkansas school districts (according to the Arkansas Department of Education Data Center website). He said this year’s test scores came in while he was on vacation, and he hasn’t had time to

review them.

“I told the board, this [construction project] is not for seniors graduating in the next three or four years; it’s for the kids in kindergarten graduating in the next 12 years,”

he said.

“We need to make sure our kids are ready to compete … in college, technical school or the workforce.”

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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