Members of the Wayland Board of Education have the arduous task in the next month of deciding what to do about a proposed bond issue next May.

After more than a year having public input meetings, brainstorming sessions with architects and conducting a survey, it appears they will have to decide how much to ask voters to buy facility upgrades and new buildings.

“We have to make a decision about what the scope may be by Thanksgiving to keep us on track,” Superintendent Norm Taylor told board members Monday night.

Two proposals rose to the top of the list of possibilities after a citizens’ committee met to make recommendations earlier this year. One was for $53.45 million, the other for $48 million. They include:

• Plans to close and sell the 75-year-old Pine Street Elementary building to build a new elementary school.
• Plans to build an entirely new pool and renovate the old one into a new home for the band and orchestra program, thereby opening up new room for auto shop.
• Building a new and larger tennis court to replace the two failing courts at the high school and junior high.
• Adding a sixth grade wing to the junior high to create a middle school and open up music and athletic programs to sixth-graders.
• Installing artificial turf at the high school football stadium and getting rid of the crest in the middle of the field.
• Performing improvements for the parking lots and remedying drainage issues.

The difference between the $48 million plan and $53 million proposal is the new elementary school. One for grades K-5, built near the transportation building, would be a cheaper option because it would be constructed on land the school already owns. The other would be for grades four and five at a Leighton Township location to offset the loss of Moline Elementary in 2003 and because Leighton is absorbing the largest population growth in the county, if not the state.

Some people at Monday night’s meeting indicated some district residents are attached to the Pine Street school, which when it was built 75 years ago served all of Wayland and was the high school until 1974.

But Board President Tom Salingue said original plans were not to close Pine Street, the idea surfaced as a citizens’ committee came to under stand the old school would need about $6 million in to renovate it and bring it up to modern safety standards. A new school wouldn’t cost a whole lot more, they reasoned.

“The ideas at the public forums were not brought forward by the board,” Salingue explained. “They were brought to the board… There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and a lack of (good) information.”

Indeed, there have rumblings of dissatisfaction by the public over the proposals the board is considering for a bond, with some saying the cost is too great, some saying they don’t want a new pool, some wanting to save Pine Street and yet others insisting Gun Lake Casino funding of $1.5 million a year be used instead.

Taylor, commenting on Pine Street, said he understands its sentimental value, but, “By the time the bond is paid off, you’ll still have a school that is 100 years old.”

He said it is troubling that barely 50% of the residents in the survey believe the school district is growing. He noted that district-wide student population is just 25 students shy of 3,000 and the expansion of the Hunter’s Glen mobile Home Park near Moline is a good example that there’s more growth to come.

Salingue said, “We’re becoming a destination district and that’s wonderful, but there are growing pains.”

PHOTO: Board of Education President Tom Salingue, Supt. Norm Taylor and Trustee Janelle Timmerman-Hott discuss the bond proposal they and colleagues hope to offer next May.