Mid-Prairie aims to collect 850 signatures for bond issue petition by Jan. 5

By Molly Roberts
Posted 12/14/21

At the regular meeting of the Mid-Prairie Board of Education on Monday, Dec. 13, Superintendent Mark Schneider gave the board an update on the district’s possible bond issue.

“Last …

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Mid-Prairie aims to collect 850 signatures for bond issue petition by Jan. 5

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At the regular meeting of the Mid-Prairie Board of Education on Monday, Dec. 13, Superintendent Mark Schneider gave the board an update on the district’s possible bond issue.

“Last Monday, we a group of citizens that met here and talked about how a bond issue is a dance between the school board and the public,” Schneider said. “Obviously, if you want a bond issue to be successful, school board has to come to a consensus about what they would like to see in a bond issue with construction projects, but the school board can’t put the bond issue in front of the public unless there is a petition that comes from the public to the school board.”

In order to get the bond issue on the March 1 ballot, the school board must receive a petition with at least 725 signatures, but Schneider said the district is aiming to get 850 signatures, in case some who sign are not authorized to do so.

“The absolute minimum was 725, but we would like 850 because there might be people that sign it who aren’t 18, there might be people who sign it who don’t live in the district,” Schneider said. “If we just get 725 and have 25 that don’t live in this district, then it wouldn’t be a valid petition and the board couldn’t act on the petition.”

Schneider said the district and citizen partners have come up with three main ways to collect signatures: Individual canvassing, having the petition at activities and having someone there to answer questions, and putting the petition in local businesses to collect signatures.

After the signatures are collected by Jan. 5, district business manager Jeff Swartzentruber will certify the signatures and then the petition will be brought in front of the school board on January 10.

“It would be up to the school board whether or not to put it on the March 1 ballot,” Schneider said. “The board could always say they don’t want it on March 1 and they could vote to put it on the September ballot.”

The school board has a running list of frequently asked questions they are expecting and prepared to answer for the public.

“These are the questions that we’re getting,” board president Jeremy Pickard said. “When we’re attempting to answer them, it’s good to have a consistent message.”

In other business, the board and Schneider signed a Superintendent Commitment Statement, in which Schneider committed to stay with the district through at least the 2022-23 school year.

Schneider explained that it is a non-legally binding commitment statement, that it is a “good-faith effort” from the school board and the superintendent.

“We do it this way at Mid-Prairie, it’s for a year-to-year contract,” Pickard said. “If we decided that we didn’t want Mark to continue as superintendent, or Mark decided that he didn’t want to continue as superintendent, we would try to make that known to each other early enough that we would still have time to go through the hiring process in order to be able to select and replace the current superintendent.”

Schneider explained that the commitment process was worked out 21 years ago when he started as superintendent.