Rockwood Labor Club is urging union members to vote “Yes” on Proposition 4, a COPE-endorsed $68.95 million bond issue supported by the Labor Club and the Greater St. Louis Labor Council, AFL-CIO.
“Education is the cornerstone to success,” said Rockwood Labor Club President Marty McClimens (Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 562), emphasizing the need for the no-tax-increase bond issue to address maintenance and program improvements that have been put off in recent years due to budget constraints and the failure of previous bond issue proposals.
“Sufficient funding will help keep Rockwood the premier school district in the state and give our children the best opportunity to be successful,” he said.
Passage of the Prop. 4 measure would allow the district to begin addressing more than $170 million in facility and maintenance needs in four key areas at the district’s 19 elementary schools, six middle schools and four high schools. These would include:
• TECHNOLOGY – Update technology at all the schools and renovate the high school science labs to support Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programming.
• SECURITY – Make improvements throughout the district to strengthen safety and security for students and staff.
• MAINTENANCE – Perform annual preventative maintenance throughout all schools, including roofs, flooring, heating/cooling, playgrounds and parking lots, and energy efficiency.
• ATHLETICS – Install synthetic fields and replace tracks at the high schools.
“This is part of a long-range plan that will allow the school district to transition into a pay-as-you-go method of funding annual cycle maintenance projects,” says Tim Rooney, Rockwood School District’s chief financial officer.
As a result of retiring some current debt, passage of the bond issue would not require an increase to the district’s current debt service tax rate of 68 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.
The measure requires a four-sevenths (57.14 percent) majority for passage.
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