MIDDLETOWN — School principals are optimistic that a $15.3 million general obligation bond program in the Middletown Unified School District will pass in the Nov. 7 elections.
At the heart of the bond issue is a new elementary school that Minnie Cannon Elementary School principal Tom Hoskins and Middletown High School principal Chris Heller say is critically needed. At a separate site, the new elementary school would be removed from the campus where the elementary school, middle school and high school all presently function in a virtually seamless and sometimes awkward environment for students K through 12.
Other Lake County districts, including Lakeport, Kelseyville and Konocti, Hoskins points out, have all recently passed similar measures.
“I believe this is the first bond issue that Middletown has ever put before the public,” Heller said. “It should be something that the community supports, because a lot of people here, I think, value education.
Hoskins, a first-year principal at Minnie Cannon, says that one of the most important reasons that a new grade school is needed is identity.
“One of the things I noticed when I first came here was they said, This is going to be your new school,”” he recalls. “But I had no idea what part was which. There is really a kind of nonidentity for our elementary school because we kind of exist in the shadow of the students from the middle school and high school.”
In an effort to delineate where the grade school begins on the campus, Hoskins created a makeshift identity banner and hung it in front of the school”s administrative office.
A new school, he contends, would do a lot to give Minnie Cannon its own identity and instill pride for the students, staff and parents.
Heller says he wants to see a grade 7 to 12 school on the present campus “just because of the role model thing.”
“Sometimes high school kids aren”t on their best behavior and I don”t want the younger kids to see that,” he continued. “Being a parent myself, I just don”t think that”s a good environment educationally. Elementary kids should be on a campus where they”re with an elementary environment.”
Said Hoskins, “Everything we do here is in consideration of there is a high school and middle school on this campus. For example, our cafeteria. We have to eat during a very small window in the day because that cafeteria has to serve all the middle school kids and they have to clean up everything and get out of the way for the high school kids.”
With the assumption that the bond measure passes, the district must then decide where it would be built. Two possibilities are on a site across the street from the district offices, presently owned by the county and being viewed as the location of a new library. A second is in the middle of the Vintage Faire subdivision at the Highway 29-Butts Canyon Road intersection, where ground is expected to be broken next year.
“I think that”s what is going to sell the development,” Heller said.
Hoskins believes so strongly in the need for the new school that he has attended public events, such as MHS football games, to promote it. Heller says that several get-out-the-vote phone banks have been conducted for Measure X.
“I don”t know the percentage,” he says, “but the general feeling is there”s good support out there for it. It”s just a matter of getting people out there to vote.”
If there is opposition, he surmised it would come from homeowners who would oppose the $55.86-$59.49 per assessed $100,000 value of property they would be required to pay if the measure passes.
In addition to the new school, Measure X would pay for technology and structural upgrades on the campus, which, says Heller, “we are in desperate need of.”
MHS football coach Bill Foltmer called the elementary school and renovations of the high school gym, which has not been improved in three decades, the first two priorities.
If there”s anything left, he said, it should go into improving the school”s athletic field, “because they”ve outgrown those Saturday afternoon concrete bleachers.”
Contact John Lindblom at jlwordsmith@mchsi.com.
