Rocky Boy Schools expansion Election rescheduled

An election for selling Impact Aid Revenue Bonds to pay for an expansion at Rocky Boy schools originally scheduled to end Wednesday has been postponed.

"There was a paper shuffle delay," Superintendent Voyd St. Pierre said, adding that a form to hold a mail ballot election was not submitted to the Secretary of State's office in time. "It was just an oversight, and since we didn't meet that mandatory part of the law, we were not able to conduct the election."

Instead, the election will be held as a poll election Friday, Aug. 6, in the old Stone Child College gym from 8

a. m. to 8 p.m. Holding the poll election will help keep the proposed building project on track time-wise, if approved by voters, because a 70-day protest period for the mail election will not be required.

"We are anxious to get this process rolling," St. Pierre said.

If voters approve the $4,105,000 project, construction would hopefully begin by the early fall, he added.

The bond funding proposal requests that the high school pay for 60 percent of the bonds at $2,220,000 and that the elementary school pay for 40 percent, or $1,485,000, because of the seventhand eighth-graders who attend the high school.

Once finished, the project will add three classrooms at the high school level, two locker rooms and update two existing locker rooms, storage and office space and gymnasium seating and revamp the foyer.

"Expansion is definitely needed," St. Pierre said. "We have grown both at the high school and junior high levels over the past few years. We are at a real critical time ... we're just out of space.

"We see the construction project as expanding some of our academic programs for our students, and ultimately, it is about the students," he added.

"I think community pride is also another important piece of the project," he said.

Community members and Tribal elders were included in the planning process to incorporate Chippewa Cree Tribal language, heritage and culture in the space, particularly in the foyer.