Altus bond issue will fund safe room for elementary students, improvements to baseball complex

A $6.7 million bond issue being proposed for Altus Public Schools will allow the district to continue upgrades it started under its 2019 bond issue, without raising taxes for property owners.

Residents in the Jackson County school district will use the funds generated from that 10-year bond issue in two areas: creating a safe room/media room for Altus Elementary School and for Phase II of the upgrade to the district’s softball/baseball complex in the former Kiwanis Park.

Amanda Davis, public relations director for the district, said the work at Altus Elementary School will give that facility a storm shelter while also providing a special education area that will include a classroom, therapy rooms, a shower and washer/dryer area, and bathrooms. It also will give students a new “state of the art library and media center,” while the old center is converted to two classrooms. Those new facilities will be encompassed within a safe room, a designated area large enough to hold the entire school population during a tornado.

Davis said that project is a continuation of one begun under the 2019 bond issue, which built safe rooms in the early childhood center (Pre-K and kindergarten students) and the Primary Center (grades 1 and 2). That also means the district knows this is what residents want. Davis said as district officials were preparing for a new bond proposal, they surveyed faculty, staff and community partners to determine what they thought the district’s needs should be, whether that be new projects or chipping away at ones identified in 2019.

“When the surveys came back, the majority said let’s finish what we started before we start something new,” she said, citing the original plan to build storm shelters at every school building.

That’s also why a focus remains on Kiwanis Park, an area that is giving the school district its first softball/baseball complex. The first bond issue paid for new turf and fencing, which allows the school district to pay softball in the fall and baseball in the spring. The new goal is to update and expand the park’s offerings.

“There’s no locker on site,” Davis said, explaining that means students have to dress somewhere else before going to the fields.

The complex still has its original concession stand and non-ADA-compliant bathrooms, and existing restrooms are inadequate for the number of people who use the complex at one time.

“We’re going to make it more user-friendly, not just for students,” Davis said, of work that also will include a new indoor pitching and hitting facility, new entrance, ticket booth, coaches’ offices, and parking lot that can be used by the park and the nearby Museum of the Western Prairie.

With voter approval, Davis said work could begin this summer on Kiwanis Park, with the saferoom project tentatively set to begin by summer or early fall.