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Q: How did you decide on the improvement projects?
A: The district worked with the recommendations for the 2020 facility study completed by Plunket, Raysich Architects, LLC., involving Engineering, Construction, and Architectural Professionals.
They examined several options, along with costing. They surveyed families and staff. They met with a “Family Focus Group” to tour the building and provide recommendations. They met in retreat to go over survey results, options, and work with financial consultants. Using all of these pieces of information, they were able to develop a fiscally responsible proposal that met the desired priorities of the various groups without increasing the tax levy from the 2019 referendum.
These are the top priorities of staff, parents, and facility groups:
1. Demolishing the old sections of the building that require significant ongoing maintenance or significant rehabilitation to bring them to code as learning spaces.
2. Adding and improving playground and outdoor learning/ collaboration spaces across grade levels.
3. Rehabbing Technology Lab Space or Large Group Instruction Spaces that are minimally used now, due to classroom technology or one-on-one technology devices, into student learning spaces.
4. Adding student creative experimentation and/or "makerspace" areas (collaborative workspace inside a school for making, learning, exploring and sharing).
To view a full list of parent, staff, and facility group priorities please click here.
Q: Why are there two questions?
A: Splitting our referendum into two questions allows us to more clearly delineate our needs in terms of ongoing operating costs and facilities improvement. In addition, it gives us more flexibility to review our operating referendum needs after the 2024-25 school year when we will have a better sense of state funding and can re-evaluate student needs.
Q: What happens if the $1.5 million Operating Budget question doesn’t pass?
A: In this scenario, we would likely have to use our remaining ESSER funds and potentially deplete our fund balance to cover our operating costs for the 2022-23 school year, assuming we wanted to maintain our current staffing levels and class sizes. We would then have to go back for an operating referendum in 2023 and if that were also to fail, we would have to make significant cuts to staffing and other operational areas in order to maintain a balanced budget.
Q: What happens if the $18.3 million Bonding Referendum doesn’t pass?
A: In this scenario the district would have to prioritize our facilities needs and address only the most pressing projects which currently come out to about $8 million; there would be no funds available for any of the updating of educational and playground spaces. The funding would come first from our Fund 46 Long-Term Capital Improvement fund and after those dollars are exhausted we would need to pay for any remaining costs out of our Fund 10 operating budget, likely over multiple fiscal years. We would need to deplete a significant portion of our fund balance. This would lead to more short-term borrowing throughout the year and a higher interest rate on future borrowing needs.
Q: How can you say that this will not raise our taxes when the district is asking for $1.5 million annually for operating and $18.3 million for bonding?
A: Salem School District is currently in the third and final year of a non-recurring operating referendum that passed in the spring of 2019. Keeping taxpayers in mind and being fiscally responsible, the goal of this upcoming referendum is to keep Salem’s mill rate (property tax rate per $1,000 of equalized property value) at or below the 2021-22 level. We are looking to replace the current $3.6 million operating referendum with a $1.5 million operating referendum, which would leave us around $2 million annually to finance the bonding referendum and maintain a flat or slightly declining mill rate, using a conservative 3% interest rate (recent bonding rate has been around 2% to 2.5%).
Q: Wasn’t the building just remodeled in the past two referendums?
A: The last referendums were operating referendums that could only be used within the annual period. The facility funding was dedicated to necessary maintenance projects as they arose, but since the funding needs to be used within a given year, the district was unable to borrow for a larger project that updated or significantly improved facilities.
Q: Why are you proposing to tear down a part of the building? Can’t you just fix it up?
A: Presently, the two sections that are slated to be torn down are the small 1916 section and a two story 1950 addition. It is really a consideration of whether money should be invested in maintaining and heating sections of the building that cannot be used for students and its main purpose is for storage. Neither area has been open to students for over 20 years. The amount of money that would be required to make them accessible and acceptable for student learning would cost significantly more that could be achieved through other means (i.e. building a pole storage shed, garage, and shop area).
Q: I heard this referendum is about adding frills that are not needed…Science Labs? Improved Playgrounds? Updated classrooms?
A: This referendum is about completing identified maintenance items and responding to the needs of our families and staff. Maintaining our buildings, making our playgrounds safe and accessible to our students, providing opportunities for our students to gain important skills for the future, and providing classrooms that encourage hands-on collaborative learning were listed as top priorities. Preparing our students to be successful in a competitive changing environment would not typically be considered a “frill.” We are in a state that allows for students to open-enroll to other districts that can better meet their needs. Paying other districts to educate our community youth does not seem like a good use of the community's funds.
Q: Why are you asking for more money during these hard times? Didn’t you get a lot of money from the federal government for COVID relief funds?
A: While there is uncertainty in today’s economic environment, schools have fixed operating costs such as transportation and utilities that are rising faster than inflation. Moreover, the school district’s largest expense, salaries and benefits, are also expected to increase, even though the state has frozen school funding through the 2022-23 budget year. The Salem School District did receive federal grant allocations to support our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These are one-time funds which are set to expire after the 2023-24 school year and will likely need to be used to plug the operating budget, due to the flat revenue allocation from the state in this biennial budget.
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