EDITORIAL: Yes.

The Port Washington-Saukville School District needs a new school in Saukville. The need is genuine and plain to see. The old Saukville Elementary School is too small, needs expensive repairs and upgrades if it were to stay in use much longer and is burdened with a classroom design that thwarts the best education for some of the students who need it most. The district has a practical solution in its plan for a new school on a new site. Voters should approve it by voting yes on the referendum in the election Tuesday.

School Supt. Michael McMahon and the School Board have made a convincing case for building a new Saukville Elementary School, a case that is strengthened by the choice of an ideal site for what will be a neighborhood school near residential areas and sidewalks that will allow some students to walk safely to school.

The referendum proposal also includes borrowing to pay for needed maintenance projects at other schools, including addressing aging heating and cooling systems, building security and ADA compliance, as well as window and roof replacement, emergency generators and new playgrounds.

Approval of the referendum would authorize borrowing $59.4 million. As would be expected for building and improvement projects of this scope, it’s a large number, but the district’s debt service planning keeps the tax impact at a reasonable 26 cents per $1,000 of valuation, equivalent to $78 a year for a home valued at $300,000.

The spending authorized by the referendum is a direct investment in the quality of Port-Saukville public schools.

Instead of traditional classrooms, the Saukville school, which was built in 1955, has pods that group about 60 students in the same grade in one area with makeshift dividers to give some semblance of organization. Noise and distractions are problems and there is so little private space for teachers to work individually with students that a supply room doubles as quiet space for speech and language therapists to work with students. Administrators say the open classroom design particularly hinders progress for children who struggle in school.

The school is so short of space that early childhood students who would otherwise be taught there instead attend Dunwiddie Elementary School.

One of the priorities for improvements in other school buildings is replacement of the Thomas Jefferson Middle School roof. The need is obvious—the roof has failed spectacularly in the past, flooding classrooms.

The school district has put together a no-frills referendum package that meets essential needs and deserves the support of voters.

A note of caution, however, for district officials—they might not be able to count on voter support for a future referendum if it resembles plans to replace or remodel Thomas Jefferson Middle School outlined in a survey of district residents in October.

The alternatives presented in the survey were construction of a new school for $80 million or renovating the existing school building for $54 million. The plans have one unfortunate feature in common: both would require the elimination of the TJ Aquatic Center and swimming pool. The only option suggested for the district to avoid being left without a swimming pool was to build a new aquatic center at the high school at a cost of $22 million.

None of this is acceptable. A swimming pool is not an optional extra for a school district of Port-Saukville’s size; it’s a necessity. Adding $22 million in referendum debt to the $80 million or $54 million cost of replacing or remodeling the middle school to provide a swimming pool is a non-starter that should be taken out of the conversation.

The Aquatic Center is owned by the school district, but it is a community resource that improves the lives of people from the district’s youngest residents who learn to swim there to its oldest who exercise there. And it is home to the high school swim and dive teams, competitive sports made possible for district students by the pool at the middle school.

The district should settle on renovating the school with the Aquatic Center and then work to find solutions to the building’s issues that cost less than the projected amounts.

But those are future concerns. At this moment, the referendum on the April 1 ballot meets every standard for a strong yes-vote majority that will stand as a statement of support for our public schools.