What’s next for District 93 after bond passed for new elementary school
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IDAHO FALLS — The superintendent of a local school district hopes to have a new elementary school open by 2025 after a successful bond vote Tuesday night.
Voters passed a $34.5 million bond for Bonneville Joint School District 93 to build a new elementary school south of Telford Road in Idaho Falls. The bond will additionally provide funds to repair the roofs of other district schools.
RELATED | New elementary school coming to District 93 after successful bond vote
“I am obviously thrilled with the results (and) happy to see the higher voter turnout and support for this school,” said District 93 Superintendent Scott Woolstenhulme to EastIdahoNews.com on Wednesday.
The measure passed with a significant majority, with 3,264 people voting in favor of the new school and 1,391 voting against it. That’s over 70% in favor of the bond. It required a 66.6% supermajority vote to pass. The district had previously tried to pass the same bond in May, and it fell about 1% short.
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During the May election, only 2,818 district patrons voted on the measure. On Tuesday, 4,655 people came out to vote.
Woolstenhulme encouraged those who voted no because of their frustration with paying more in property taxes to contact legislators and share their concerns.
“The constitutional duty to establish a uniform and thorough system of public schools must include funding to actually build the schools necessary to provide education. Local residents should not be burdened with the significant cost of building schools,” Woolstenhulme said in an emailed statement.
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The new elementary school will be built to enroll at least 700 students in general education classrooms and will also provide additional classrooms for special education.
“We will be able to make sure to have enough classrooms for kids. We will be able to keep our all-day kindergarten program, which has been a huge blessing to our families and to our students,” Woolstenhulme said. “We will be able to provide additional classroom space for special education kids — so just really, really happy with the support of our community for it.”
The goal is to also alleviate overcrowding issues at schools like Iona and Discovery elementary schools.
So what are the next steps? Woolstenhulme says that the district has already been working with architects over the summer so that they didn’t lose time after the bond didn’t pass in May.
“Likely, our next step is to select a general manager and contractor so they can put input on the design and make sure that we are doing it as efficiently as we can. That should happen probably within the next four to six weeks,” he said. “Then, we will be moving into the engineering phase and then looking to start bidding the school, hopefully in January or February.”
He added that he is hoping the new elementary school will break ground by late spring of 2024 and that the school would be open for students in 2025.
The elementary school does not have a name yet, but he is hoping for input.
“We will do a lot of work over the next year with the community to name the school. We will be asking for a lot of community engagement and getting their ideas and thoughts about that,” Woolstenhulme said.
