HAMILTON — In recent years, school bonds and levies have failed in Hamilton.
However, the district is trying again with two new levies — one for safety and another for technology.
"I feel like our budget is flattening out a bitand not necessarily immediately, but within the next year or two, we will have some decisions to make," Superintendent Dave Thennis said.
Thennis said that the district wants to make sure the quality of education doesn't suffer from decreased infrastructure and safety measures, which is why Hamilton is running two levies.
"With the uncertainty around federal title money and money for schools in terms of federal dollars, we have decided to try to stabilize that ourselves," Thennis said.
Learn more here about the levy requests:
The safety levy specifically is about keeping school resource officers and behavioral health specialists available.
"Safety is so fundamental. You really can't do teaching and learning without safety, and it's just a necessity that has to be there," Thennis stated.
Personnel wouldn't be added, but instead would be able to support current staff without potentially unavailable external resources — like the sunsetting COPS grant which currently helps cover a second school resource officer in the district.
"Each year that the amount that the federal grant is paying is reduced," Thennis noted.
If approved, that levy would cost $475,000.
As for the technology levy, that mainly supports things like WiFi that keep the schools running, not buying the latest devices and screens.
"The things that you don't see are the things that we really want to make sure function for us. So much of our just our ability to communicate with families, to communicate with each other relies upon that structure being sound and reliable," Thennis said.
If approved, the technology levy would cost $430,000 and expires in 10 years.
The levies are independent of each other so one could pass while the other is rejected.
To learn more click here.
