Jefferson City Public Schools leaders discuss ways to address growth, facility needs

Leaders of Jefferson City Public Schools are discussing ways to address growth within the school district.

Monday, the board of education held a work session to talk about the district’s top facility needs and how to meet them.

“The one constant is that we have space issues, and unfortunately they’re district wide,”JCPS Board of Education President John Ruth said. “So we get the opportunity then to decide, if you have a limited amount of funds or support from the community via taxes, where do you start?”

This school year, nine out of the 11 elementary schools are over capacity.

The middle schools and high school are expected to be at or over capacity in the coming years, according to projections by the district.

ABC 17 News reported, the JCPS long-range planning committee listed a need for a second high school and additional elementary school among other things.

Monday, the board looked at ways to attain those goals and whether or not the goals are realistic for the near future.

Much of the discussion centered around how the district would fund those major projects.

The board weighed the option of asking voters for a tax levy increase in April for a second high school. But many members agreed there was not enough time to put together a solid plan to ask voters for the levy.

“The discussion we had tonight seems like there’s just not enough time to plan to put that on the ballot appropriately while doing the type of community engagement you want to do before you do such a big, lasting project like that,” Ruth said.

Another option discussed that was more popular among board members was to ask voters to waive the Proposition C Rollback Levy in April 2017.

The JCPS school district is one of only seven percent of districts in the state that does not waive the rollback.

That would give the district about $4 million, so it would only be able to fund smaller needs.

The district may then have to ask voters for a tax levy for the larger projects in 2018, as the remaining 2017 election days would require a two-thirds majority approval vote.

If the district does not ask for a tax levy in 2017, board members said they may have to do some re-districting in the near future to balance space issues in the elementary schools.

The school district must file what it would like to put on the April 2017 ballot by mid-January.