Voters In Bartlesville To Decide On $38M School Bond Issue

With the February 14th election just around the corner, Bartlesville Public Schools has a big school bond on the ballot. The $38 million bond will provide upgrades to the district in several areas, with a lot of the money going towards expanding both Wayside Elementary and Ranch Heights Elementary schools.

District enrollment is up by about 200 students from two years ago, and both Wayside and Ranch Heights are dealing with overcrowding. The expansion to both schools would allow for an enrollment of 760 students while also providing a larger cafeteria and library. The new classrooms would also double as an all-school storm shelter.

The district wants to start on the Wayside expansion as soon as this summer if the school bond passes, with the Ranch Heights project to follow about six months to one year after the Wayside expansion starts.

There were also discussions about potentially building a new school to help deal with the increase in student population, but the district believed that it would be better to add on to the existing schools.

"We've talked about things. even building a new school. We just felt like the administrative overhead that would come with having another school did not make sense for us. We just need to add on to a couple of our elementary schools," Chuck McCauley, Bartlesville Public Schools superintendent said.

One of the biggest questions when a school bond is on the ballot is determining how much property taxes could increase to help fund the bond. McCauley said that there would not be a tax rate increase because of this bond.

"There’s no millage rate increase in the district. We have come to an agreement with our community that we are going to keep that millage rate flat. The only reason those folks' property taxes might go up is because the value of the property did, but it won’t be because of the school millage rate," McCauley said.

This bond would also look to replace old electronic whiteboards and dim projectors in both middle schools and the high school with bright touch screen panels, maintain through 2026-2027 1:1 Chromebooks and services across all grades which would include cellular hotspots for students lacking home internet service, and maintain through 2026-2027 PreK-12 STEM devices and equipment and support laboratory science to keep the districts' programs up to date.

This school bond will require 60% voter approval in order to pass. If the bond does not pass, McCauley said that the district would go back to the drawing board to figure out how to deal with overcrowding issues in the schools.