In a landslide, Beaufort County votes ‘yes’ to $439 million school referendum
Beaufort County voters gave the green light to the school district to borrow $439 million to prevent overcrowding, modernize buildings and improve safety in the district’s largest school referendum yet Tuesday night.
The measure passed with 72% of the vote, according to results posted on the Beaufort County Board of Voter Registration and Elections website at 11 p.m. Tuesday. More than 18,800 votes were cast, representing about 12% of the county’s 150,632 registered voters.
The loan, which taxpayers will pay back over 25 to 30 years, helps equip schools to handle the county’s rapid population growth and development. Superintendent Frank Rodriguez pointed to the bond as the best way to raise money for improvements because the district is unable to do so with impact fees, where developers pay to offset the cost of more students attending school in the area. Now, students, teachers and parents will see Hilton Head Island High School and Lady’s Island Middle School rebuilt, and a new pre-K through fifth grade elementary school and an early childhood center in Bluffton.
Superintendent Frank Rodriguez said ground breaking for some building projects could be seen as soon as spring 2024, especially because of the design work that has been done prior to the referendum on Hilton Head Island High School, the new elementary school and the expansion of Career and Technical Education at Mary River High School.
“Those would naturally be the probably the first projects coming out of the gate,” Rodriguez said. Chief Operations Officer Robert Oetting said they predict those projects will be done by spring or summer of next year.
Other aspects of the referendum, like the additional safety and security enhancements will be spread out through the next four to five years. A complete schedule for the projects will be released later this year, according to Oetting.
The votes comes four years after the 2019 referendum, which was the first in 11 years and followed two failed votes in 2016 and 2018 under superintendent Jeff Moss who presided over a dysfunctional board. Superintendent Frank Rodriguez was newly appointed during the 2019 referendum, which passed with a nearly equal margin.
Before the final votes were tallied, board member Ingrid Boatright spoke about the importance of this referendum passing, “I think that if it does pass ... it indicates sustained support as opposed to an incident of support.” She represents District 11, which includes Hilton Head Island.
Boatright said the number one thing that motivated her constituents to vote wasn’t the $167.4 million to rebuild Hilton Head High School, but Rodriguez’s cross-county information sessions.
“I’m not nervous,” the superintendent said early on Tuesday night at the school board meeting. He went home to watch the results, like he did in 2019.
“This is what I do,” Rodriguez said, explaining he’d rather go home than to a watch party. He said he’s comfortable with his decisions surrounding the referendum despite a Hilton Head citizen filing an ethics complaint last month alleging Rodriguez used public funds to influence the outcome of the bond measure.
Rodriguez instituted an independent group of volunteers, called the Citizen-Led Oversight Committee, to monitor all referendum building projects in 2019. They will continue to monitor this referendum’s funds and present their findings publicly.
“We are very appreciative of (the community’s) overwhelming support,” Rodriguez said. If it didn’t pass, Rodriguez said they would be trying to figure out what to do with overcapacity issues in Bluffton and a high school on Hilton Head that needed to be rebuilt.
“We would have to be in a mode to try to figure out how to how to deal with that,” he said. “And there really weren’t very good options.”
Here is a breakdown of the funds:
- Rebuild of Hilton Head Island High School — $167.4 million
- Rebuild of Lady’s Island Middle School — $65 million
- New preK-5 elementary school in Bluffton — $56.5 million
- Riverview gym — $19.2 million
- Career and technical education renovations and additions — $36.4 million
- Technology warehouse imaging center — $3.7 million
- HVAC replacements — $16.9 million Furniture — $1.6 million
- Parking lots/drives/sidewalks — $17.7 million
- Additional safety and security enhancements — $22.4 million
- New Early Childhood Center in Bluffton — $29.7 million
- Constructing and equipping a kitchen for the Right Choices Alternative Program and the District Educational Services Center— $2.4 million
This story was originally published November 7, 2023 at 11:16 PM.
