Cincinnati's school board is expected to approve on Monday the biggest, costliest public works project in city history — a $1 billion plan to rebuild or renovate nearly every public school. Then comes the next task: persuading taxpayers to pay the bill.

        Residents could be asked as early as November to approve a bond issue that would raise $480 million of the $985 million cost of the decade-long building project.

WHAT'S PLANNED

Plan for each school and map of schools

        But decisions about when to ask voters for money will be carefully weighed. New tax money won't be needed right away, and Cincinnati voters haven't passed a major school bond issue for building improvements since 1975.

        School board members say they want to win at the polls the first time they try. They don't want to have to come back to voters with funding attempts that already have failed, or with requests for more money as the project progresses.

        Some school board members say November makes sense.

        “There's a certain momentum,” board member Sally Warner says. “Since the community meetings (in January and February), people are excited about getting the buildings fixed.”

        Cincinnati Public Schools, with an enrollment of 42,000 students, is one of 612 Ohio school districts eligible to receive state money to rebuild schools over the next 10 years. Districts receive state funding based on their property wealth.

        Cincinnati's plan includes 31 renovated schools and 35 new buildings — an enormous undertaking in a city where the average age of school buildings is 59 and many are badly in need of repair. Sixty-six buildings would be operating at the end of the project, 14 fewer than today.

        Dozens of parents and community members have voiced concerns over plans for a handful of schools, but there is no organized opposition to the construction project.

        School officials call it a no-brainer. They say it would give urban students the same state-of-the-art facilities commonly found in suburban districts. Ultimately, supporters say, it could stop the city's four-decade population flight.
        The size of a bond issue is not in question.

        School board members know they will need about a 5-mill levy, enough to raise $480 million to obtain $211 million in state funds. A bond issue that size would cost the owner of a $100,000 home an additional $153 in each of the next 28 years.

        Timing of a bond issue is less certain.

        The district could wait. Even without the state match, the district has $300 million to complete the first of four construction phases to build 15 new schools and renovate two.

        But the district doesn't have enough money to complete the project. Voters would have to approve a bond issue before the second construction phase, scheduled to start in 2005, could begin.

        The state will contribute about 23 percent of the total cost of each phase, as long as the district can fund the remaining 77 percent.

        In determining when to put a bond issue on the ballot, board members have much to consider:

        • They may try a bond issue in November so they have enough money to complete the entire project by 2012. Board members don't want to rebuild part of the district and not be able to finish it because of the inability to pass a bond issue.

        • Voters passed a 6-mill operating levy in November 2000 with a pledge that the money would last four years. Although that money was for operating costs and a bond issue would be for building construction, voters might not differentiate and be angered by a new request before 2004.

        • The district could wait until the first new schools are under construction so residents could see the work in progress. Construction would begin this summer on the first new school, a $14 million Rockdale Academy in Avondale.

        • Waiting has its own hazards. Several other levies will be placed on ballots in the next few years for operating Cincinnati's public schools. The district doesn't want the bond issue to compete with them.

        “We have to stagger these (levies),” board member Catherine Ingram says. “We've got a lot on the table in the next couple of years. Only a fool would go for the dollars we need on the capital side at the same time we go for the dollars on the operating side.”

        The district also wants to make sure it has sufficient buy-in from the community to pass a bond issue.

        Some parents whose children attend Sands Montessori in the West End are angered that the plan calls for the Sands program to be moved this fall to Mount Washington, where a new building is planned.

        Until it's closed in 2007, the current Sands building would be used to house other school children while schools are renovated.

        “My heart goes out to the people there now who love the school,” says Nicole Reblando, a Sands parent who lives in Mount Auburn. She has circulated a petition to keep Sands in the same area and has collected nearly 150 signatures, about 50 of which are from parents.

        She says she and others don't want to see Sands, which has been in the area more than 20 years, leave for another community. They worry the program will lose its racial diversity and that parents won't want to send their small children every day on a bus across the city.

        Other parents and teachers, however, are relieved that the program is leaving the crumbling West End building for a new location with lots of green space.

        Community members and parents of children who attend Hoffman school in East Walnut Hills also are frustrated with the plan and could oppose funding.

        Hoffman was being considered for renovation in plans released in January. But a group of community members persuaded the district to propose building a new school in the Walnut Hills/Evanston area for Hoffman and Windsor students. That would mean closing Hoffman and Windsor.

        About 20 community members associated with Hoffman came to a school board meeting Mondayto say they don't want the 80-year-old Jacobean-style school closed.
        The 11th-hour opposition can be troubling, but district officials say they crafted the master plan after attending more than 30 community meetings and reviewing information from 1,018 surveys.

        The seven school board members have been supportive of the plan, and the board is almost certain to approve it Monday. Not only are the improvements needed, members say, but adjustments can be made in each of the four construction phases if enrollment and housing trends change.

        Board member Harriet Russell says the district worked hard on the proposal, revised it with lots of community input and should try to pass the bond issue in November. For a levy to be placed on the Nov. 5 ballot, the district must file papers at the Hamilton County Board of Elections by Aug. 22.

        Voters in 1993 turned down the last bond issue attempt by a 3-to-2 margin. It would have raised $348 million for building improvements.

        The last major school bond issue passed by Cincinnati voters came in 1975. It was for $12 million. The new request would be 40 times that size.

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