Volunteers with the VOTE committee are gearing up for an election campaign.

As the Tahoma School District Board of Directors prepare to vote on a construction bond that would pay for a fifth elementary school among many other projects, City Councilwoman Erin Weaver and Barbara Kennedy, co-chairs of the Voice for Tahoma Education committee, are working with other volunteers to educate those who live in the district’s boundaries on the bond.

“The VOTE committee is comprised of leaders that are a cross section of Maple Valley,” Weaver said. “We’re starting to spread the information within our own groups.”

The school board will vote on the bond at its Jan. 25 meeting with it potentially going to voters at about $120 million.

The driving force behind the bond for district officials is to ensure that students will stay warm, comfortable and safe while in Tahoma school buildings.

In November, district spokesman Kevin Patterson told the Reporter Tahoma’s enrollment was just shy of 7,400 with projections of an additional 1,700 students by 2020.

And unless the district builds a fifth elementary, adds classroom wings to Tahoma Junior and Tahoma Senior high schools, among other things, there just will not be enough space for the enrollment increase the district anticipates.

At the junior high, for example, space is at such a premium for the 1,221 eighth and ninth graders the school’s staff has had to get creative.

“At the junior high we are so close to being so full that there are no more steps that can be taken to alleviate it,” Weaver said.

She explained the campaign to promote the bond will include “a wide variety of measures” ranging from a presence on social media website Facebook, print media, letters to the editor, among other strategies.

“Closer to the election date we’re going to be waling around neighborhoods and knocking on doors,” she said. “We’re going to be at meetings at the schools and different community groups and spread the word that way.”

It’s going to take a great deal of work just to get the word out so those who living in the district’s boundaries can make an informed decision, Weaver said, but more important will be to get Tahoma parents to fill out the ballot.

“We researched some of the voting trends in the Tahoma School District, which included the city (of Maple Valley) as well as the outlying area,” Weaver said. “One of the startling facts that we found out… we have approximately 9,000 parents. Of those 9,000 parents, only 6,000 are registered to vote. The most illustrative number is that of those 6,000 registered voters, only 2,500 approximately voted in the last levy campaign that we ran last year.”

Those numbers told the VOTE committee that it is crucial to reach out to district parents.

“They are the ones dealing with the effects of crowding in our schools,” Weaver said. “It’s the parents of our students that need to really get engaged so our focus for the campaign, it’s community wide and it’s for everyone, but one of the areas we will focus on the most are those parents who are registered but did not vote.”

And given that a construction bond requires a super majority, or 60 percent approval, to pass it is that much more crucial to get information out about the bond, Weaver added.

“If they get the information, then it’s their choice, they can decide what they want to do for their children’s future,” she said. “Parents need to know (what happens if it doesn’t pass), as well. Whatever the reasons are for why people aren’t voting, if they understand the ramifications of what would occur if it doesn’t pass, I think it would be compelling.”

The district tried unsuccessfully to run a bond measure in 2001 that would have paid for athletic fields and a performing arts center, school officials told the Reporter in November. A bond measure to pay for a performing arts center in 2004 failed, as well.

This measure would pay for considerably more, in addition to a fifth elementary and building a new Lake Wilderness as well as the work proposed at the junior and senior high schools, siding would be replaced at four buildings, heating and ventilation systems would be upgraded, a performing arts center would be built at the high school, Rock Creek Elementary needs a new roof, renovations would be done at Cedar River Middle School to provide more common area space, and the list goes on and on.

Over the course of two and half years, explained Craig Mason, an architect from DLR group, his firm has worked closely with the district, a citizens advisory committee and focus groups at several of its schools to assess the condition of the buildings, to develop designs that would help Tahoma meet its educational goals and integrate its Classroom 10 technology initiative.

The last bond measure the district passed paid for projects through 2005, Weaver said, so the district and board has been looking at a construction bond for some time now.

“The school board has working diligently to come up with the best outline … they’re trying to use their money I believe in the most efficient way possible,” she said. “There’s just nothing that’s frivolous

They are just so good at managing their money and doing everything they can to be more efficient.”