MARQUETTE, MI-- Marquette Area Public Schools will ask voters to consider a bond proposal on Tuesday’s ballot.
Superintendent Bill Saunders says the $6.285 million would be used first and foremost to expand classroom space.
“We’ve had a pretty significant uptick in enrollment over the last four years,” he says. “We’re up about 250 kids, and due to that we’ve had to move into computer labs in a couple of our elementary schools.”
The money would also be used to upgrade the MSHS track, construct an auxiliary high school gym, install artificial turf at the high school football field, purchase a new planetarium projector, make the Shiras planetarium more ADA-compliant, and construct a computer-makers lab.
Saunders says while the bond proposal is a new tax, it won’t be an increase in taxes for residents.
“We have an existing millage—bond—that was passed in 1994 to build two of our elementary schools that’s getting ready to drop off,” he says. “So in reality this would replace that millage that’s dropping off, so the millage rate that people are paying to the schools would not increase at all.”
The election will be held Tuesday, May 3.
