School district details $17.5M bond proposal

The Lincoln Parish School District hopes to implement some $17.5 million in athletics, security and other upgrade projects at Ruston High School and Ruston Junior High School.

To do that, the district plans to ask the public for a five-year property tax extension at a bond election on April 27.

Before the school board votes on the proposal on Feb. 6, officials detailed each of the projects at a public forum Monday night at RHS in front of some 150 attendees.

“We wanted to get together and begin the conversation, a dialogue with our community, to talk about some of the issues that we see as a board, some things we’d like to address over the next few years,” board President Gregg Phillips said as he opened the meeting.

The projects

The biggest chunk of the proposal is $12.2 million for athletics upgrades at Ruston High, headlined by a $5 million covered pavilion with a turf field that would be used by most sports as well as band and cheer.

Other athletics projects:

• Renovations to move the softball team back to its old field on Bittersweet Avenue — $3.5 million

• Repairs and renovations to the baseball field to “make it more like a stadium” — $2.2 million

• Gym renovations for boys and girls basketball dressing rooms — $1.5 million

Another $2.45 million would go toward security upgrades at the high school and junior high — securing entrances, additional gates and fencing, and advanced body scanners that can detect weapons and other banned items.

Roof repairs at RHS would cost another $1 million, while parking expansions at both schools would run another $630,000.

The only portion of this package that would benefit schools in the Ruston district other than RHS and RJHS is the proposed purchase of five or six activity buses for $900,000 that would be shared by all schools in the city.

Superintendent Ricky Durrett said this list of projects were those the RHS and RJHS administrations believe are “non-negotiable” short-term items.

The taxes

The package would be financed by extending an existing property tax for an additional five years. This one tax pays off all the outstanding bonds the school system has issued for capital improvements over the years.

Levied at 16.75 mills in 2023, without any new bonds the tax would begin rolling back to smaller amounts this year, with further roll-backs in after 2026 and 2036, as fewer previous bond issues remain to be paid off.

If the new bond proposal passes, the tax would not rise past the current 16.75-mill rate, but the roll-backs would be delayed while these new bonds are paid off over the next five years.

But the tax wouldn’t immediately go away if this new proposal fails, as it’s still paying off previous bonds.

The next phase

The district is calling this bond proposal Phase 1 of capital improvements for Ruston schools.

Phase 2 would involve bringing in a consultant to conduct a needs assessment and feasibility study on the Ruston district as a whole, making recommendations to the board on a 20-year plan for each school site.

That may include closing or moving some sites.

A year ago the board passed a $65 million capital improvement plan for the Ruston district, the bulk of which would have renovated Hillcrest and Glen View Elementary schools to make them K-5 sites while closing Ruston Elementary and Cypress Springs Elementary.

Some of the athletics projects, such as the covered pavilion, were also included in the package.

But voters struck the bond proposal down at the polls by a wide margin last spring.

Several of the attendees who asked questions at Monday’s meeting had been part of a group that formed to oppose the school closures during last year’s bond campaign.

“With our last bond issue, the things that made it fail, from what I was told, was our elementary schools and the changes we wanted to make there,” Durrett said when asked about the intent behind Phase 1. “We were trying to get some things together that we heard from the community last time that they would support.”

Durrett said while he has no idea what recommendations Phase 2 would bring, as a consultant has yet to be hired, RHS and RJHS were the only two campuses his administration felt comfortable making investments in during Phase 1, as the largest and most populated schools.

“We left the elementary schools out of anything here because … we didn’t want to put money into it and then have to tear it down or do something different with it,” he said.

Priority

Every item in the project list presented Monday would fit under the proposed $17.5 million bond issue and accompanying tax extension without any cuts, if the school district’s estimates hold.

Nevertheless, many of the questions and comments from attendees centered on priorities: which projects should be elevated above others and whether some were the best use of funds.

Athletics projects make up nearly 70% of the proposal’s monetary total, compared to 14% for security improvements.

But Durrett said the safety projects were nonetheless the top priority.

Until the school board votes on the capital improvement plan, the project list is still in flux.

The board will meet Feb. 6 at Ruston Elementary School at noon as part of its pre-established schedule to mix in campus visit with its more typical evening meetings.

Members can either pass the capital improvement plan as presented Monday, make changes and then pass it, vote it down, or forego voting on it at all.

If passed, the board would have to call the April 27 bond election to finance the plan.

Look for more coverage on the details of the athletics and security projects in upcoming editions.