Doug Jacobs joked that if enrollment in Morgan School District keeps growing the way it has, students will have to be shuttled into school like skiers headed to Snowbasin Resort.
“We’ve outgrown our schools,” the district superintendent said. “We have schools at capacity and huge traffic concerns. We can barely get buses down our main street in town. Something needs to be done.”
The northern Utah district east of Layton has added about 100 students per year for the last five years and now has about 3,000 students. The vast majority of those students attend schools in Morgan City that are filled to the brim, creating an overcrowding problem the district hopes to address with approval of a $49 million bond proposal to be put to district patrons Tuesday.
If approved, Morgan School District aimed to use the money to build a new middle school in nearby Mountain Green and add classrooms to Morgan High School. The measure would raise taxes by about $158 annually on a $300,000 residence and about $287 yearly for a business property of the same value.
Enrollment growth has been a point of discussion in the district for three years, leading to the creation of a taskforce to analyze how best to accommodate the influx of students.
The district as had trouble in the past in gaining public support for bond measures, Jacobs said. But residents across the district, he said, have acknowledged its needs, even if they aren’t happy about a tax increase.
But until Tuesday, Jacobs said, he will remain guarded but optimistic about passage.