High schools likely will go to two with or without bond approval

Changes are coming for the city’s high schools whether or not a bond issue on the April ballot is approved.

If voters say yes to Proposition 2, the St. Joseph School District will head down a path to construct two new high schools.

However, if the measure doesn’t pass, SJSD Superintendent Dr. Gabe Edgar said there’s some rearranging to be done.

“The next option would be to go to a two-high-school model with the current facilities,” Edgar said.

The first option the district is looking at is to use Lafayette and Central and its two high schools.

”If you look at occupancy, the only option that you would have would be to do some renovations to Central High School and also some renovations to Lafayette High School,” Edgar said.

The district’s current facilities are built to support about 14,000 kids, but current and projected attendance has dropped, meaning there’s more space than needed, he said. Restructuring the current model may take some different forms, Edgar said.

”Benton is not going to close. Benton will be a middle school,” said Edgar. “There’ll have to be discussion on what they want to do with Lafayette, and then we also just said that Benton, there is an opportunity to use it as the second high school and combine that with Hyde as a campus model.”

Following the April election, any decision won’t immediately impact students.

”We’re not going to force the district to go to two high schools in 25-26, that’s some information that’s false,” Edgar said.

Instead, SJSD administration will re-evaluate after the election and look at which route is best.