Bentonville School District got a dose of useful information last week when results of a recent survey of school patrons was released.
Just how useful it will be is limited, however, by the relatively low participation.
Only 1,712 people responded to the survey sent late last month to 8,842 of the district patrons.
The district was trying to discern why voters there turned down a 6.7-mill increase in property taxes to pay for a 2,000-student second high school in Centerton, remodeling of Bentonville High School and additional technology and other upgrades throughout the district.
When the June 26 vote failed, it prompted a wide round of speculation on why voters rejected it.
Consequently, there weren’t many surprises in the results of the recent survey, which actually listed the dift erent reasons the district had been hearing anyway.
Not surprisingly, a majority of those who responded cited the cost of the plan as the reason for voting against it.
This was certainly an expensive proposition, not only in terms of the millions of dollars to be spent to build the new high school and make the otherimprovements but also in its impact on local property tax bills.
The tax rate for the school district would have jumped to 50.4 mills, which would have been the highest in Arkansas.
The Bentonville School District includes property in several cities and the value of property varies. That makes it hard to suggest a universal impact on all district patrons, but a recent article in the newspaper noted the owner of a home in Bella Vista with a market value of $200,000 could have expected a $268 increase in the property taxes. With the property tax already at $1,838, that $268 hike was enough to frighten taxpayers away from the higher millage.
The way the survey worked, recipients were to rank the three reasons they voted for or against the millage increase.
The cost of the plan drew 835 responses while the impact on property taxes made the list for 749 people.
The next largest number of respondents, 487, said they were against the plan because of the athletic facilities it would have funded.
The good news for Bentonville School District was some voters actually seem to have recognized the extent of the district’s overcrowding problem. Of those voting for the tax, 610 said they did so because of overcrowding. The prospect of two high schools instead of one attracted 441 responses and a provision to meet technology needs throughout the district got 256 responses.
Travis Riggs, a Bentonville School Board member who helped craft the last proposal to voters, said the survey confi rmed what board members had been hearing.
“Overall, cost of the millage is going to be a battle we are going to have to tackle. I think we are going to have to put our heads together with this new board and fi nd a way to do it,” he said.
That is, of course, understatement. Nothing has happened since the last vote to slow the need for additional facilities in the district. Nor can costs of school construction be expected to drop between now and the time another project might be proposed and passed.
The challenge will fall to newly elected members ofthe school board, who will meet in October to start sorting out not a couple of problems: What to propose to voters next? What to do with the overcrowding that already exists and will persist until voters accept something to let the district build more facilities.
What the survey accomplished was to confi rm what the board and school administrators had pretty much already fi gured out.
As Superintendent Michael Poore explained, the cost of the last proposal was obviously too high “and we have to come in at a lower number.”
They’ve gotten that message. Now they’ve just got to figure out how low the number must drop to be acceptable and still cover the cost of a new high school (with or without athletic facilities).
The survey is, as Poore said, just a piece of the puzzle. But one set of numbers does suggest more survey respondents favor a second high school than would oppose one.
At least that question may be resolved, even if the details on what kind of a second high school the voters might accept still aren’t known.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST.
Opinion, Pages 12 on 09/30/2012