New London schools seek voter approval for $5.3 million bond

Enrollment in the New London school district is increasing, and the district needs to make room for that growth.

The district is looking to voters to approve a $5.3 million bond in September to make more room for more students.

“Over the last three years, we’ve seen a steady increase in our enrollment, and specifically, every kindergarten class that has come in over the last three years has been at or above the 50-student mark,” New London Superintendent Chad Wahls said. “That presents a good problem, but a bad problem when it comes to the number of classrooms you have available.”

This year, 34 seniors graduated from the school while the kindergarten class has 51 students coming in for the upcoming school year.

The elementary school will have three sections each of kindergarten, first grade and second grade.

“Our elementary music will be on a cart and have to into each classroom and teach,” Wahls said. “We are out of space.”

Wahls said that the bond would pay for the conversion of the elementary school’s current multipurpose room, which is used as the elementary gym, to additional classrooms.

“We are looking at converting our current multipurpose room in the elementary, which is a small gym, to make additional classrooms for the additional enrollment that we have seen,” he said. “We’re going to convert that room into three classrooms.”

That creates a need for a new elementary gym, which is also part of the proposed project.

Because of the school property’s configuration, Wahls said that the new 15,000-square-foot gym would be added onto the middle school/high school building.

“Our schools are very close,” Wahls said. “The challenge is elementary kids would have to go outside between buildings to get to PE. We are working on seeing how we can alleviate some of that concern.”

One of the options being considered is building a corridor from the elementary school to the new gym.

The gym, which would have seating for about 450 people, would also serve as a practice gym and a competition gym for the middle school and junior varsity.

Another part of the project is parking upgrades on the campus.

“We would also do some demolition to expand our parking around our campus as we are landlocked and limited in quality parking,” Wahls said.

Wahls explained that if the bond is approved, it would not impact the district’s tax rate.

“The tax rate would not change,” he said. “It’s just a continuation of the current tax rate that was put in when the community voted in favor of the last (general obligation) bond, that we still have a couple years to pay on.

“We’re not doing it to overlap; we’re doing it to connect. We’ll just take the $2.70 (bond levy) that was applied eight years ago and continue it.”

The term of the bond will be 20 years, but Wahls said the district could pay it off sooner.

He noted that the district will pay off its current sales tax bonds in 2026, and that would open up additional funds to put toward the new bond debt.

The bond election will be on Sept. 14, with early voting to begin on Aug. 25.