News Photo by Julie Goldberg Alpena residents Anna and Dave Meinhardt help their children, Will and Reid, with their homework during their day off from school on Monday.

ALPENA — Alpena resident Anna Meinhardt is the parent of two Alpena Public Schools students and believes they deserve a warm and dry place to learn.

Meinhardt’s children attend Besser Elementary School and Thunder Bay Junior High School. She said her vote on March 10 is a vote not just for the schools, but also for the community.

“I believe that you can’t have a healthy, thriving community if you have subpar schools,” Meinhardt said.

Both new roofs and new boilers for a majority of the schools are part of the district’s request in March for permission to sell $33.9 million in bonds that would be used for numerous facilities repairs and renovations across district buildings.

While not technically a tax proposal, voters would repay the bonds over the next 25 years through property taxes. Taxes are expected to stay the same — 1.8 mills, or about $90 a year for the owner of a $100,000 — because bonds sold in the 1990s are about to be paid off.

Some residents oppose bond proposal because they don’t want to continue paying taxes. That’s part of the reason voters in May rejected APS’s original $63 million bond proposal. The March 10 proposal is far narrower in scope.

If the March proposal is rejected, taxes drop next year.

“It doesn’t cost any more money,” Alpena resident Mark Mallette said of the proposal. “I’ve heard excuses like, ‘I just don’t really want to see change, I don’t want to see the buildings look different,’ but why don’t you want upgrades?”

Meinhardt said the community needs to think long-term because the schools are not going to get better.

“I feel like there are long-term consequences if this doesn’t pass,” she said. “There is a big ripple effect to what happens to the quality of Alpena Public Schools if our buildings are subpar.”

Meinhardt isn’t the only parent in the community who wants the schools to be warm and dry for students and staff.

Alpena resident Tom Sheldon is the parent of two Lincoln Elementary School students, with a third child who will attend the school in a couple of years. He believes all children in the community need a comfortable and safe place to learn every day.

“They need schools with ceilings that aren’t leaking in the classroom and heat so they don’t have to wear their coat,” Sheldon said.

Students and staff members are walking around buckets in the hallways in the schools because of leaky roofs and having to wear coats in some classrooms because older boilers make the temperature unpredictable.

Lincoln Elementary was built in the late 1990s thanks to a 1996 bond sale approved by voters. Those bonds raised almost $27 million to build a new Lincoln and a new junior high.

Though his children go to a new school, Sheldon is worried about when they are older and attend Alpena High School, where ceilings are leaky and boilers aren’t working properly.

“My whole look on this is for the future,” he said. “My youngest is 3, so I’m going to be depending on the school system for the next 22 years, so they need a good, safe, healthy, clean place to learn.”

Mallette’s children attend Ella White Elementary School and the junior high. He said his son who attends Ella White is always cold and has to wear his gloves and coat to stay warm.

“It’s hard for him to concentrate and learn, and that really bothers me,” Mallette said. “I don’t get why it’s so hard for our kids to be dry and warm.”

Steve Jakubcin is the parent of Posen Consolidated Schools students, but he lives in Alpena and pays taxes there and will get to vote on the March 10 bond proposal. Jakubcin said he supports the district’s bond request.

He said a strong school system makes the community stronger.

“The school system echoes through our community, so, whether that would just be business people or professionals that maybe want to move to Alpena and, if they look at our schools that are falling apart, they might look at another community to move to or invest in,” Jakubcin said.

The children in the schools are the future, Jakubcin said, and they deserve to have a safe place to learn.

“It’s difficult enough to learn without having to worry about whether the roof is going to leak on you, or if you’re going to be cold, or, above all, safe, so, to remove those distractions and have that peace of mind is key for all kids,” he said. “I think everyone wants kids to be safe. No one wants to see any of the kids in our community get hurt. No one wants that.”

Julie Goldberg can be reached at 989-358-5688 or jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jkgoldberg12.