Our school district is using political tactics by including a luxury item along with some very necessary expenditures in the upcoming referendum. This luxury item is a $36.1 million, 50-meter pool. This facility would be twice the size of the current YMCA pool (25 yards). Swimming is a lifelong activity, not a graduation requirement. In my opinion, the school system has not done its due diligence in justifying this expense, as evident in its single slide shown during a community presentation. While our superintendent has an admirable goal to enable all students to learn to swim, where is the plan?
On the slideshow, pool use is broken down as follows:
A. The swim team comprises roughly 1% of the district population (70 swim team members of the 6,587 total student population). This team would probably use the pool from Nov. 15 through March 15, excluding Sundays and holidays (100 days) at two hours per day. If we assume the pool is available for 12 hours per day for 350 days, the percent of use by this team is roughly 5%.
B. Expanded opportunities for students: Nothing is listed as to what those opportunities would be. In his speech, the superintendent did mention summer camps.
C. Staff use: Nothing is listed
D. Community use: Nothing is listed.
With a pool comes increased yearly operational costs that aren’t even addressed! As taxpayers, we should demand a more extensive plan that would include more student use and the utilization of the other 95% of available pool hours. This plan should also include how the school system plans to offset the additional operational costs to maintain a pool. It is fiscally irresponsible to build a facility that would be underutilized and would add a significant increase to an already-overburdened operational budget. I urge our community to vote no to this referendum as it is presented.
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