Hays school board to go back to the people with bond survey

FROM LEFT: Ron Ferris of Nabholz Construction, Amber Beverlin of DLR architect, and Stephanie Meyer, DLR education funding specialist, speak to the Hays school board April 30.

By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

The Hays school board asked the administration last week to work on a voter survey that would further explore why a school bond election in November failed.

Members of the Vision Team, the district’s architect DLR and its construction manager Nabholz Construction were at the meeting April 30 to further analyze why the last bond election failed and discuss what might be needed to have a successful bond in the future.

The board has spent the last several months talking about facilities needs, but no new bond or bond committee has arisen from those discussions.

Valerie Wente, member of the Vision Team, said she thought there was a push to put forth a bond that was larger both in dollar amount and time than what the voters in a previous survey had said they would be willing to pay.

The $78.5 million bond would have been paid for over 30 years and would have increased taxes on a home worth $150,000 by $16.43 per month.

Another bond also failed in 2016.

“The fact of breaking that down into smaller bonds and asking for smaller amounts over three or four or five bonds in the future is a very scary thing,” Wente said. “We have tried to explain this in many different ways. This community is different than your Johnson County, Shawnee County, other places who have passed bonds year after year for large amounts of money without a thought. You can look at that as they value their education extremely high in their communities or those that go to polls vote for education as a part of their basis. I don’t know what that dynamic means. But this animal in Hays is different.”

Wente said she did not know if it is a division in the community, a financial concern or the fact that Hays does not receive state money for bond projects as many other districts do. Doing multiple bonds in the future may be the way to go, but Wente said she did not think at the time of the 2017 bond proposal, the district was going to be able to get another bond to pass five years down the road.

That would have left two-thirds of the district’s needs unmet.

Vision Team member Chris Dinkel, who is now a Hays city commissioner, said the bond faced multiple obstacles: a tax increase, an unstable economy, a deep distrust of education both at the state and local levels, lack of participation from the community, a tough political climate in Hays and a lack of buy-in from both the community and the board.

“The first time it felt like it was the board’s plan, and you said, ‘Here it is. Run with it.’ This time it felt like the board said, ‘This is all you. I got nothing to do with it.’ We need to meet in the middle on that,” Dinkel said. “Yes, the community is going to come together and present a plan to the board of education, but this is also the board of education’s plan. There needs to be buy-in on both sides. I think that is definitely an area where we need to do better and where we fell down last time.”

Board president Lance Bickle said he agreed with Dinkel about the board’s involvement.

Tom Wasinger was also on the Vision Team and he did not support the final proposal the team sent to the board. He said the Vision Team and the board did not listen to the people.

“You guys did a poll through DLR and it said three main points,” Wasinger said. “They want smaller, more frequent bonds. They wanted no larger than $10 per month increase per household. When you added up the numbers, it was 58 percent for each one of these, and they wanted to focus on elementary schools.

“When we started out this process, we were pretty much on this wave length, and then all of a sudden it just kind of blew up.”

Wasinger continued, “The idea that this community won’t support a bond I think is fallacious. It simply has to be a bond they think is worth fighting for.”

Wasinger said he thought the Vision Team was very unbalanced, yet he thought it will be difficult to get people who have differing views to come and sit through hours of meetings on a bond issue. He said he would like several plans, possibly from several groups to be presented to the board and then the board pick the best plan or combination of plans for the next bond.

Board member Greg Schwartz has advocated for the board to be heavily involved in the process of developing the next bond, noting the school board meetings are public and televised.

“Politically, I think you are wrong about this,” Wasinger said. “I don’t think people care about coming to these meetings. I don’t think people care about what you say at these meetings. At the end of the day, they just want to know you listened to them. If you had just listened to this poll, you would have passed a bond.”

DLR’s statistics indicated few vested voters, including parents and teachers, voted in the election. There are about 3,800 vested voters in the district; 48 percent or almost 1,900 of those people are registered to vote, but only 937 of those people (about 24 percent) voted.

Stephanie Meyer, education funding specialist for DLR, said the group likes to see parent participation closer to 70 percent and 50 percent is average. She said 24 percent was one of the lowest participation rates she’s seen in a bond election.

“There is a disconnect between what is happening here and whatever is happening with the parents that is making them apathetic about it, which is a huge issue. If you had increased to 50 percent, that would have been an extra 1,000 votes. …

“What is causing this apathy? I think it is worth it to take time to talk to the voters and other community members and really drill down on that.”

Changing election type has helped other districts, which might mean a mail ballot for the district’s next bond vote, she said.

Nabholz’s Ron Ferris said he thought the process for the 2017 bond was good. He noted the cost of resolving the district’s facility issues is only going to increase as inflation pushes up construction costs.

Amber Beverlin of DLR said she would still recommend addressing the district’s elementary schools first as they are the district’s oldest buildings. The district could also increase efficiency by having one or more four-section elementary schools as opposed to two- or three-section schools. The cost of a new four-section elementary school was estimated at $21 million.