Atha: “It reaffirms my faith back in the community.”
Garden City voters narrowly passed a $97.5 million bond issue that will provide the district with a new high school, according to unofficial results from the Finney County Clerk’s Office.
Bond supporters cheered and hugged at the Educational Support Center to Board of Education President Mike Utz’s announcement that more than 51 percent of voters favored the issue. The vote count was 4,577-4,354, with provisional ballots yet to be counted.
The bond issue funds the board’s long range facility plan, which has been more than a year in the making. It was developed after talks of overcrowding at Garden City High School, where 14 teachers use carts instead of classrooms to hold their materials and where students take courses in 11 trailer classrooms.
It entails construction of a new, 2,000-student high school with room for expansion to house 2,500 students, conversion of the main Garden City High School building into a middle school, conversion of Abe Hubert Middle School into an elementary school and expansion of Garfield Elementary School into an early childhood center.
Superintendent Rick Atha said the results were “exciting,” because the bond issue offers “an opportunity for us to meet the educational needs of our kids for 20 to 25 years if we don’t have unexpected growth.”
“It reaffirms my faith back in the community,” Atha said of the vote. “If they get the information, they’ll step up to the plate.”
I have voted at least 5 times for a new high school. My children all had to have classes in trailers and watch new teachers struggle with carts as classrooms and they are since graduated. I have watched people put big bucks into a fair ground that is used only in the summer with a parking lot that had to be redone twice. FINALLY people put their vote on something that will give the best return—–children learning in a safe bright not crowded classrooms. Maybe now we can keep teachers instead of begging from other countries to get enough teachers to teach our children. Thank God we will soon have a new high school. Thank you voters.