The old school ways

BENTON, Mo.

It's fairly easy to picture Nikki Heuring as a one-room-school marm hauling buckets of water from a primitive well into her classroom.

Except Heuring makes her trek from the school cafeteria, where she fills up her buckets with tap water, then walks down a hallway, out double doors and up a ramp to her classroom in one of Kelly School District's three modular buildings.

Heuring teaches art but her classroom, the entire modular building for that matter, has no running water.

School officials say the modular buildings are just one problem prompting them to place a bond issue for a new high school on the April 5 ballot.

This will be the seventh time in eight years the district has attempted to pass a bond issue for that purpose.

The last time the issue was on the ballot, in April 2002, it accompanied a 19 cent per $100 assessed valuation tax increase. This time around, the $3.5 million in bonds would not involve a tax increase.

The proposed plan for a new high school includes a 34,959-square-foot building with 15 classrooms and a library at an estimated cost of $2.6 million. The remaining $900,000 would go toward a new multipurpose gym/cafeteria area.

"Our facility was never meant for the number of students we have," said Don Moore, superintendent at Kelly.

The district gained around 25 students this year, bringing total enrollment up to 1,041. Those numbers make traversing the halls of the 1950s-era high school difficult, and the lack of space is also preventing program growth.

Students say the biggest challenge for them is overcrowding in the hallways.

"Classes have always been packed, but it's toughest going to class. It's hard to get there with so many people in the halls," said 18-year-old Rachel Kline, a senior a Kelly.

For Heuring, the elementary art teacher, a new high school would mean moving to a regular classroom with running water. Under the construction proposal, all but one modular unit would be removed. The last unit would be used as the superintendent's office.

"Right now, we have no room to store larger projects, like sculpture, and we can't work with clay because the floors here are carpeted," Heuring said. "The art program will get a whole lot better if this passes."

The issue would need a four-sevenths majority vote to pass. The district's tax levy of $3.17 would remain the same due to a 15-year bond issue that expires in 2008. If the high school bond issue passes, the 42-cent tax attached to the expiring bond issue would be extended for another 20 years to cover the cost of the new school.

"We've got a good school, we'd just like to make it better," said Tom Hulshof, principal at Kelly High School.

School officials will hold a public meeting to discuss the bond issue and answer questions at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

cclark@semissourian.com

335-6611, ext. 128