Voters To Decide On $17M Bond For Jenks Public Schools

Jenks Public Schools has a $17 million school bond on the ballot this election cycle. School bond elections in February are pretty common for the Jenks community because it's something that the district does nearly every year.

The director of communications for Jenks, Rob Loeber, said that while some school districts take more of a long-term approach with bond elections every few years, Jenks prefers more of a short-term approach so that the district can use the funding sooner. One of the biggest items on this bond is continuing the renovation of the Jenks Freshman Academy.

"We've already had a decent amount of renovation done to that structure in that building, and now we're getting set to enter phase 3 which will be the final phase of completely redoing that freshman academy and giving it a complete and total facelift," Loeber said.

This bond would only secure part of the funding for the final phase of renovations to the freshman academy. Another bond next year would secure the other part of the funding. Most of the work done on the freshman academy would be focused on updating some of the classrooms to be better suited for freshmen students.

"It was originally designed as an elementary school so you’re talking about classrooms that are a little bit small, hallways that are a little bit more cramped, some of those science labs that are out of date. So it’s really just tearing all of that down and starting fresh with the freshman academy to provide a space for those students that is obviously age-appropriate," Loeber said.

Some of the other items on the bond include technology updates, textbooks, facility management repairs, replacing the turf and updating the video board at Allen Trimble Stadium and other athletic facility updates. The district said that property taxes would not be increased with this bond.