From the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette:
Voters overwhelming rejected the final stage of East Allen County Schools’ district redesign plan Tuesday, forcing board members to rethink plans for renovating several schools.
According to unofficial results, 63.9 percent of voters rejected the referendum on the district’s $88 million building plan. While 5,139 voters cast their ballot against the measure, 2,902 voted in favor of it.
“It’s disappointing, but not surprising,” EACS school board President Neil Reynolds said. “It’s about the taxes. People just thought it was too much to pay.”
Had it been approved, the project – the third and final phase of the district’s redesign plan – would have turned New Haven High School into a seventh-through-12th-grade building and renovated the former Harding High School, which will open this fall as East Allen University.
The project would have also created a third-through-sixth-grade “intermediate” school using part of Park Hill Learning Center and relocated the East Allen Schools administration building to New Haven Elementary.
Reynolds said the buildings are all in dire need of upgrades, and that the board will need to address the issue in coming weeks.
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The $88 million project would have been the final stage of a three-stage $111 million district redesign plan to close several schools and renovate others.
The first phase expands Woodlan Junior-Senior High School into a kindergarten-through-12th-grade campus, and the second phase does the same at Heritage Junior-Senior High School. Both the Woodlan and Heritage projects were approved through a dueling petition process – not a referendum at the voting booth.
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http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120509/LOCAL/305099926/1002/SEARCH
