”
Ecstatic
”
is the word of the day at the Gilroy Unified School
District.
The reason Gilroy Unified School District officials were
celebrating was because 67 percent of residents voted day to pass a
$150 million school bond. The bond will complete Christopher High
School
– Gilroy’s second high school – as well as a new elementary
school and facility upgrades.
“Ecstatic” is the word of the day at the Gilroy Unified School District.
The reason Gilroy Unified School District officials were celebrating was because 67 percent of residents voted day to pass a $150 million school bond. The bond will complete Christopher High School – Gilroy’s second high school – as well as a new elementary school and facility upgrades.
“This was a labor of love,” Superintendent Deborah Flores said about the bond. “This demonstrates one of the most wonderful aspects of our democracy. When people are hurting financially and the economy is at its worst, all the communities that supported these measures realized that school districts don’t have any other way.”
In addition to Measure P, five other school taxes passed countywide with at least 70 percent of the vote.
Measure P held a strong advantage from early evening returns, and ended up with a 12 percent margin over what was needed for passage.
As election results weren’t available last night, Flores woke up at 5 a.m. this morning to refresh her computer’s screen and view the results. At that point, no one in her house was awake yet, she said. But the first thing she did was e-mail the bond campaign committee, thanking them for their work, and share the news with her husband when he woke up.
“I was thrilled,” she said.
The approval of Measure P authorizes the district to sell $150 million worth of general obligation bonds to be paid off over the next 40 years with local property tax revenue. Property owners will pay an estimated $60 for every $100,000 worth of assessed property, which translates to about $366 a year for the average Gilroy homeowner. The new bond will kick in only after another school bond, Measure J, which taxes property owners $70.50 for every $100,000 of assessed value, sunsets in 2011.
John Perales, principal of CHS, spent the evening of the election glued to a computer screen, clicking the refresh button every few seconds. He called it quits just after midnight this morning and went to bed, he said. But after his morning run, he checked back in and breathed a sigh of relief – with all precincts reporting, the bond had far surpassed the 55 percent of the vote it needed.
“I’m excited,” he said. “I think it’s a vote of confidence. People realize we’re doing good things at the district.”
With the bond out of the way, Perales is happy to focus his efforts on opening up a new high school, he said. He spent today holding interviews for future CHS staff and ordering furniture for the classrooms.
“Folks realized how important this high school is to the community,” he said. “They really believe in what we’re doing and it feels good.”
