School bond discussions continue as bond vote nears

Sally Hawkins of the School Board attended Superintendent, Angela Rhoades, Tiger Talk at Prairie Elementary on Sept. 7.

Both Sally Hawkins and Angela Rhoades proudly presented information about the school bond and answered questions that teachers and staff of Prairie Elementary had in regards to the school bond. Sally Hawkins started off by explaining her three big reasons this bond is important to her and the community.

“The three reasons we want to make this investment is for safety, additional classroom space, and to improve facilities. To help improve our students safety we will receive security cameras, add/update fire and sprinkler systems and much more will be updated for safety expectations. As we are growing quickly, we know that we are projecting to have roughly 3300 by 2032 and we don’t have the space needed for those students. This investment will help facilitate those extra classrooms. All schools will receive improvements at their sites. Tablets need outlets. We will input more outlets to better suit our new technology such as chrome books and iPads. The exterior renovations have also been proposed and can be seen online. We want our site to be presentable where our students and staff are excited to go to their schools. We want to look like the schools you see in the big cities.” Sally Hawkins, School Board, said.

During the presentation, teachers of Prairie Elementary asked how the school expansion would affect teachers.

“North Park will hold students’ grades 2nd-5th. Which then means that Prairie Elementary will then hold kindergarten and first grade.” Hawkins said.

Prairie teachers then became curious about how long it will take for the construction to be completed.

“If all goes well, we hope to start in May 2022 and will work on one building at a time. We are hoping that it will be complete in two years. When that time comes, we will have a plan for teachers to move items around in a less stressful manner.” she said.

This plan came from a group of 30 community members, and they have been meeting for nine months now. As you drive around town, you will most likely see a lot of signs promoting community members to vote early on the Oct. 8 or Tuesday, Oct. 12.

“This bond will bring more jobs to Guymon. We will get a recruitment website going to bring in more teachers to fill the extra classrooms. This will help minimize classroom sizes, allowing more time for teachers to work one on one. We strongly believe that better school sites will make more teachers want to come and teach in our buildings. We truly want our teachers and students proud of where they are at for most of their days.” Angela Rhoades, Guymon Public School Superintendent, said.

To help promote the bond, yard signs can be seen around town, buttons are being worn, bi-folds in English and Spanish can be found that are informational and table tents can be found at restaurants with QR codes.

“We are trying to do what we believe will impact the most of our community. If we want to move our community forward this is the something that can move our community forward.” Hawkins said.