Voters in the Highline School District have once again rejected a plan to rebuild aging schools, upgrade the district's technology and make other critical building repairs.
Though the proposed $376 million bond issue was slightly smaller than the package voters rejected by just 215 votes in November, it fared worse in Tuesday's special election. Results showed 53 percent of voters supporting the property tax hike, short of the 60 percent supermajority it needed to pass.
The result puts back on the shelf plans to rebuild the crumbling Highline High School, replace the aging Des Moines Elementary and build new middle schools in SeaTac and Burien.
"The community has made it clear it wants us to work with what we have and we will," superintendent Susan Enfield said in a district statement. "Our job now is to find a solution to our overcrowding that is least harmful to our students.
Highline Public Schools leaders decided to take the issue back to the voters because they couldn’t let the district’s facilities issues fester. In an interview last week, Enfield even invoked the possibility that “an infrastructure failure” could render Highline's older buildings "uninhabitable for kids.”
Opponents of the measure said the package was too ambitious. They argued the tax increase would have strained budgets for residents of the south King County district, in which nearly 70 percent of children receive free or reduced price meals.
Karen Steele, who led opposition of the bond issue, said last week she didn’t know what to expect from this week’s election. While November’s balloting was close, she noted voters were also picking a U.S. representative and deciding the fate of two hotly-contested statewide ballot issues.
“It’s always a challenge to go to the voters and ask for them to raise their taxes. It’s a tough position for any district to be in,” Enfield noted in a recent interview.
Enfield's statement noted the bond's failure will compound the problems caused by space shortages in the district.
She said Highline school officials may now have to consider more extreme remedies, such as sending students to schools in two shifts — half in the morning and half in the afternoon — in order to make up for a lack of classroom space. But Enfield has also noted the district wouldn't likely implement this until at least the 2016-2017 school year, if at all.
