No Tax Raise For School Project

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) — The Starkville Oktibbeha Consolidated School District will not raise taxes to secure local funding for the Mississippi State University sixth and seventh grade partnership school.

The 2.9 mill rate already in place will roll over into the next fiscal year.

The school has already received a $10 million pledge from Mississippi State and the state has approved funding $10 million over the next two years, or five million dollars per year.

The school district must raise $10 million locally in order to receive the additional five million dollars from the state in the second year.

Superintendent Lewis Holloway said the support from state legislators and the university “says to us that they believe in our process that we can make this work and we can have better teachers turn out not only from Mississippi State, but across the state…”

The school district is also requesting $16 million in bonds for construction of the building, as well as technology for the classrooms, school buses, air conditioning, etc.

Governor Phil  Bryant has yet to sign the bill, and Holloway said he hasn’t heard any notion that the funding will be vetoed.

Holloway also said that is why the district is requesting $16 million in bonds because the project is a “moving target”, and no cost is official to this point.

Holloway is hopeful that the school will be open July of 2018.