Lafayette County says yes to school bond in landslide margin

Published 9:37 pm Tuesday, September 11, 2018

When it was all said and done, there wasn’t much of a contest.

Lafayette County voters approved the Lafayette County School District school bond by an 82.9 percent margin on Tuesday.

“I’m just really grateful to the voters,” LCSD Superintendent Adam Pugh said. “To me, it just shows how important education is in our schools. I’m extremely grateful to our voters and very excited to move forward with the classroom space that we need.”

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Only 8.4 percent of the ballots were against the bond, with approximately 1568 votes cast in total.

“We’ve been steady for voters. … I think for us down here (in Taylor) its been pretty good,” Martha Shaw, an election official at the Taylor voting precinct said.  “It’s been a little better than it was during the last election.”

Despite the low turnout in voters, the school district will proceed with plans for construction on the new elementary school which will be located off County Road 406.

The $24 million bond also calls for the addition of four classrooms at the current middle school. The new elementary school will house kindergarten through second grade, while third graders will attend classes at the current lower elementary school campus.

Grades four through eight will remain in either the current upper elementary school or the middle school.

“Certainly the success of our community is dependent on our children,” Lafayette County supervisor Kevin Frye said. “The long-term success of our community is dependent on our ability to educate them successfully. The schools need facilities that don’t necessarily have to be state of the art, but they do need to be updated and be sufficient to meet the educational needs of our students. Right now, they don’t, so we need to support the county schools just as the city supports the city schools.”

While there is no date set for the beginning of construction on any of the projects covered by the bond, Pugh said that the district will continue to work with PryorMorrow Architects, the firm handling the design of the school, and Innovative Construction Management, the construction company tapped to build the facility, to finalize plans and decide on the beginning of the school’s construction.