To help improve the safety, education, and experience at Reed City Area Public Schools, residents will have the opportunity to vote in a new bond millage in May.

The total price tag for the whole project is to 88-million-dollars, spread out into three “chunks.” The first series of funding will be $11.2 million in 2025, followed by the biggest chunk in 2028 of $61.2 million, and then $15.6 million to finish the bond in 2030. Currently, the district owes about $5.7 million in total debt.

When asked about the financial piece, superintendent Michael Sweet said this was the hardest battle throughout the process and even involved looking at over 24 different funding scenarios.

“We struggled and wrestled with (financials) over and over again,” Sweet said. “The history in Reed City is that when two proposals are put forward, the community votes for the first one or the lesser cost one and then votes down the second one. We could try to tear things apart and try to do it in little chunks, but everything is so integral to each other.”

 

Image of the proposed rendering for Reed City High School's entrance doors for athletic facilites (Courtesy of Michael Sweet).

 

When it comes to the focal points of the proposal, the school is valuing six different pieces in the project. The first is safety considerations by adding a new secure entrance to the middle school. This would involve a remodel of the school’s shared library, which will be renovated to serve as the high school’s and middle school’s central office area. There will also be changes to the parking lot outside the building, which would use a circular drive for bus parking and designate lanes of travel for incoming traffic. 

“The library, also known as the Porteous Academic Center, right now is underutilized because of how it's set up,” Sweet said. “It's almost like there's a corridor or a hallway that goes in between that's not actually in existence between the middle school and the high school. Part of the big re-purpose there is to take that and turn that into the main entrance for the middle school and high school. It lets us create safer student parking area, a safe walk into the building and creates a secure entrance.”

Most notably known in the proposal are two large facility upgrades. The first is renovating the current high school gymnasium into a 600-seat performance arts center, which would be dedicated to hosting music, theater, and community events. In response to this change, the district would then construct a new 14000-seat gymnasium only a few feet to the east of the former space. The space will include two-sides of bleachers, new locker rooms, a walking track, and a larger weight room and fitness center for athletes to train in. There would also be reconstructed baseball and softball fields along the main road.

 

Image of the proposed remodeled Reed City High School and Middle School renderings from an aerial view (Courtesy of Michael Sweet).

 

“Before I landed the (superintendent) job, I've been thinking about what needs to be done in Reed City. We did a facilities audit, where we had company, architecture firm and a construction management company come through all our buildings, look at our roofs, look at our walls, casements, furniture, technology, and everything so that we could get a picture of every building in the district. We want to give Reed City Schools a fresh look and bring everything up to date and take care of the needs that were identified in that assessment.”

The high school also would like to make a new loading dock area, which would be moved to near the southwest side of the high school across from the cafeteria, to help with shipping a receiving throughout the schools. Along with facilities comes the hopeful renovation of the G.T. Norman Elementary school kindergarten through second grade wing. Constructed in 1954, it stands as the oldest portion of all buildings in the district. Additional restrooms and “curb” appeal fixes were also included for several buildings.

When asked about the ideas for the proposal, Sweet said many of the ideas came from the community’s input via conversations and various surveys. 

“We ran a big survey through ‘Thought Exchange’, a platform that the district uses, and had hundreds of people reply. Out of that, we were able to disaggregate the data and came up with a few big pieces.”

Out of the responses, Sweet said the most popular was safety with parking lots and entrances, more performing arts opportunities, and bigger athletics spaces. 

 

Image of the proposed new Reed City High School gymnasium renderings (Courtesy of Michael Sweet).

 

“We took information from the survey and all the personal connections that these people had throughout the community. This allowed us to talk to people about their knowledge of what had worked in the past and what did people want to do. It took about seven months to really examine the information and then bring it back together to come up with the proposal.”

Sweet wants the public to know he will be scheduling meetings coming up to share information around the city with various groups and interested residents.

For more on the proposal, visit https://breedlove23.wixsite.com/rcapsyes.