The Jacksonville/North Pulaski School Board will ask school district residents next spring to approve the extension of an existing property tax levy to raise almost $60 million in new money for a replacement middle school and as many as three elementary schools.
The board's vote was 7-0 to put the proposed tax extension on the May 2019 school board election ballot.
The proposal, if approved by voters, would not increase the amount of taxes paid annually by property owners in the district. It would, however, extend the number of years in which the taxes must be paid, financial adviser Scott Beardsley of First Security Beardsley told the board at a meeting Monday night.
"What we hope to accomplish is going to the voters one time and getting permission from them to take care of the next six to eight years' worth of financing and construction," Beardsley said about what he called a "stair-step" plan for raising construction funds.
The proposal calls for issuing new 30-year bonds in amounts ranging from $6.5 million to $14.1 million a year for six years, starting in 2019. Each year's bond issue would be paid off over 30 years.
"This is a strategy that we have used with a couple of growing school districts," he said, adding that the plan would give Jacksonville/North Pulaski district leaders permission from voters to proceed with building a replacement Jacksonville Middle School and multiple new elementary schools.
The district is planning to build a new campus to replace Dupree and Pinewood elementaries as well as a new Murrell Taylor Elementary and then a new Bayou Meto Elementary.
Beardsley said the financial plan assumes that the district's enrollment and property values will remain about the same in the coming years as they are now, and that the district will receive state aid for a portion of the school construction costs. Those assumptions could prove to be wrong, he said.
"But overall we have enough wiggle room that we feel that at the end of six years we should be able to accomplish what the board wants," he said.
The proposal would generate a total $59.9 million to go toward the middle and elementary school projects, which the district has committed to build in an effort to attain a declaration of unitary status in an ongoing federal school desegregation lawsuit.
The district is obligated in the case to make the condition of its campuses comparable to new, more modern schools in the neighboring Pulaski County Special School District.
U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. ruled in September that the district will be entitled to be released from court supervision of its buildings by 2026 if it follows through on its commitments.
Marshall is the presiding judge in the 36-year-old lawsuit. The Jacksonville/North Pulaski district began operating only in July 2016 but inherited the desegregation obligations of the Pulaski County Special district, from which it detached.
The School Board on Monday approved a preliminary master plan to go to the state Department of Education early next year that calls for the new middle school and combined Pinewood and Dupree schools to open in 2021, the new Murrell Taylor in 2025 and the new Bayou Meto in 2026.
Beardsley said Monday that any financial setback in the coming years -- such as a drop in student enrollment, the loss of a major community employer or a big change in interest rates -- would cause the Jacksonville district to build only two elementary schools in the next few years and delay the timing for the third elementary.
"We aren't defining to the voters the number of new elementary schools," Beardsley said about language that will appear on the May ballot. "It is the board's intention that this will fund all three elementary schools ... but should something happen, our response will be to build as many as new elementary schools we can as quickly as we can but we won't issue debt that we can't pay for."
If the proposed extension is approved by voters, the 22.4-mill portion of the district's overall 48.3-mill property tax rate that is used to pay off construction bond debts could be extended to 2055. Those 22.4 debt service mills are now due to expire in the early 2040s.
"The reason we need to do this now is that we need to make sure our constituents are aware that this is not an increase in the tax," board member Jim Moore said in supporting the proposal. "This is just a continuation so we can clear up all these old facilities."
"We need to have a few town halls," School Board President Ron McDaniel said about possible community meetings to explain on the matter.
Metro on 12/04/2018