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OWASSO — Owasso Public Schools is seeking public feedback on a potential multimillion-dollar bond package that could come before voters in early 2025. As presented at a community forum Tuesday night at the Sixth Grade Center, district officials are considering putting forward a seven-year, $197 million bond package. A second forum is scheduled at 6:30 p.
m. Nov. 7 at the Sixth Grade Center.
Superintendent Margaret Coates told the roughly 40 attendees gathered in the school’s library Tuesday night that the administration’s goal is to submit the bond proposal to the board of education for consideration in December in order for it to go before voters in February. With district enrollment projected to grow by 1,000 students over the next decade, one of the projects slated for the proposal is the construction of a new two-story Fifth Grade Center adjacent to the Sixth Grade Center that would serve all Owasso fifth graders starting in 2027. People are also reading.
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Owasso currently only offers half-day pre-kindergarten, with one classroom and one teacher per elementary school. “Right now, we serve about 300 students in pre-K, but we know that when kindergarten hits, we have close to 700 students,” Coates said. “We need to somehow create space at our elementary schools to serve those additional pre-K students.
” Other purchases and projects included the tentative proposal include furniture for those new pre-kindergarten classrooms, new roofs at eight campuses, a safe structure at the Seventh Grade Center, turf replacement at the football stadium, improvements to district’s performing arts center, a new 300-seat theater at Owasso High School, renovating one classroom at every elementary school to accommodate art classes and building additional classrooms at the Eighth Grade Center that were originally part a previous bond issue but had to be cut due to increased construction costs. Based on the district’s current tax rate, the proposal would raise Owasso’s millage rate from 28.5 mills to 31 mills.
A mill is 0.1% or $1 on every $1,000 of assessed value. For a house valued by the county assessor at $350,000, that would mean a property tax increase of $94 per year or almost $8 per month.
“We rely on bond dollars to take care of needs on a yearly basis,” Coates said. “It’s about $11.3-11.
5 million a year just to sustain us at the level where we are right now. It’s vital that we have these bond dollars.” Tulsa World is where your story lives.
