In their push for capital improvement building funds, including a new unified high school, Saginaw School District leaders are taking a high-profile approach.
The $99.95 million property tax proposal would cost up to 7 mills per year, or $3.50 for each $1,000 of a home’s sales value (double the taxable value, or SEV, on your latest statement from the courthouse). For example, that’s $70 for a $20,000 market value, or $210 for a $60,000 value.
A new high school would be built at the riverfront site of the Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy, and SASA would move to a portion of Arthur Hill High, while a portion of Saginaw High would be converted into a middle school, to restore an East Side alternative to Thompson Middle. A new Handley School, the elementary forerunner to SASA, would be erected on vacant Arthur Hill land to replace the 97-year-old home in the former South Intermediate relic.
Among other districts, some strategically have gone low-profile for millage money, conducting special elections in hopes that fewer anti-tax naysayers will come to the polls. In contrast, the Saginaw Board of Education opted last winter to shoot for the Nov. 3 presidential ballot, which will attract approximately three times more voters than a single-issue referendum would have drawn.
“People are starting to feel that it’s time to do this,” says Ralph Martin, a spokesman for the Building Schools for Our Children-Our Future Committee, a group of more than 40 millage supporters. “The consensus is shifting. With so much division across the nation these days, we are presenting this as a ‘unity’ and ‘equality’ piece.”
One obstacle in choosing a presidential election for the millage is that voters will have to stick with their crowded ballots until the very bottom of the second page in order to fill in the circle for the school tax. Absentee voters especially will need to keep this in mind, instead of rushing to fill in mail-in ballots instantly, in fear of a Trump blockage.
During much of the past decade, parents and alumni protested against the prospects of closing either 65-year-old Saginaw High or 79-year-old Arthur Hill, built with capacities of about 2,000 during the World War II era. This was when suburbs and outlying communities sent their teenagers to the city because they had not yet established their own high schools. When the suburbs began to pull out during the 1960s, The Baby Boom kept the buildings mostly full.
But when enrollments at “The High” eventually dropped near 400 and at “The Hill” near 700, Martin says residents gradually have learned that two huge artifacts no longer can be economically sustained.. The new unified high school’s capacity of 1,200 pupils would reflect more “operational efficiency,” a key school board goal that is expressed in pro-millage handbills.
Alumni still can be “Trojans forever or Lumberjacks forever,” Martin asserts. And for sports fans, the prospect of stronger teams in basketball and football would be a boost.
Martin is a recently retired Saginaw city fire captain who now serves as a state marshall’s fire inspector. Part of his former job was to inspect the city’s mostly-aging school buildings. In his new employment, he visits more affluent districts such as Sanford Meridian and Big Rapids, taking note of their newer facilities.
“From experience,” he says, “I have seen first-hand the needs in Saginaw.”
Superintendent Ramont Roberts gave oversight to a 2019 planning process that featured several town-hall type community forums. After Covid-19 struck late last winter, his team worked to streamline millage costs. For example, instead of reopening the Central Middle building on Hoyt Avenue, a portion of Saginaw High will be used, and instead of building a new SASA, a portion of Arthur Hill will be kept in place. Gymnasiums and auditoriums, renovated during the past decade, also will be preserved. More importantly, the two old high schools would maintain community sentiment and presence, instead of being totally wiped out.
In another cost savings, the pace of demolitions would slow down for a savings of $4.8 million. Delayed targets are the former South Intermediate building, which had housed Handley, along with Ricker Middle in Buena Vista and eight vacant elementary buildings — Edith Baillie, Nelle Haley, John Moore, Emerson, Jones, Longfellow, Coulter and Houghton.
The timing of the bond issue is ideal, Roberts says, because the school system is turning a corner after beginning the millennium with financial hardship, the threat of a state takeover and steep enrollment declines.
An $18 million rainy day fund now is in place, although school leaders expect to gradually use some of the surplus in years to come, and the district-wide student count has stabilized in the 5,500 range. Roberts has reported that another 3,200 city school-age children attend schools across district boundaries or are enrolled in charter academies or parochial education. Improved infrastructure, along with related updated “academic excellence” curriculum, potentially could boost enrollment and draw more than $8,000 in state aid to follow each new or returning enrollee.
Saginaw’s most recent school bond issue was $70 million in 2004, mostly to build the new Thompson Middle and Loomis Elementary facilities. The vote took place as part of that year’s lower-turnout August primary and passed narrowly, 5,080 to 4,806.
For more information on the ballot proposal and the updated five-year strategic plan, visit the district’s web site, spsd.net.