Dearborn public schools are set to receive significant infrastructure upgrades after voters approved a $1.5 billion millage on Tuesday.
District leaders said the bond is one of the largest in state history. But they also said it comes after two decades of underspending on school infrastructure.
The money will go towards the construction of six new buildings, as well as major renovations across remaining schools.
“Tuesday was a statement about who we are as a community and what we believe our children deserve,” Superintendent Mike Esseily said at a press conference on Thursday. “We are not just building and improving schools. We are building opportunities for generations of children to come.”
The work will be completed in four phases across 20 years, with construction beginning on the most urgent priorities next year.
As part of the plan, the district will close some aging elementary and middle schools. Students in those areas will attend consolidated facilities serving pre-K through 8th grade. Those new buildings will split elementary and middle school students into separate classroom wings, but will share facilities like gyms, cafeterias, and elective-education classrooms.
Esseily said the size of the bond allows the district to make long term plans and avoid “a band-aid approach” to funding infrastructure improvements.
“I’m hoping we’re not asking anything of the community for another 50, 60 years,” Esseily said. “We want this bond to last generations of students to come.”
District officials say the cost to taxpayers will be offset by reductions in other taxes.
Homeowners in the school district, which includes most of Dearborn and a small portion of Dearborn Heights, will be assessed 3.14 mills ($314 for every $100,000 of taxable value) next year for the bond. But the city plans to decrease a sewer-related tax of 0.96 mills and the district will waive an operating millage of 2.18 mills, counterbalancing the increase. As other taxes continue to fall off the books, the city plans to increase its tax assessment for the school bond.
In 2019, the district asked voters for a $240 million infrastructure improvement bond. That was only half of what was needed in renovations at the time, according to School Board Trustee Adel Mozip. Voters rejected the proposal by just 242 votes.
Following that loss, administrators returned to the drawing board to hear from community members and analyze needs. The result was a proposal six times larger than the last, but one focused on long-term solutions.
“Losing [the 2019 millage] was a blessing in a disguise,” Mozip said. “We needed a transformational bond where we actually want to rebuild from the beginning and offer these transformational spaces for our kids.”
On Tuesday, the millage passed with 68% of the vote, according to unofficial results released by Wayne County.
Don Wotruba, executive director of the Michigan Association of School Boards, said voters often rebuke school millages — especially big ones — if they don’t trust administrators or don’t believe improvements are necessary.
But in this case, Wotruba said, the margin of victory suggests that “voters said, ‘I clearly understand what Dearborn is asking for … and if this is what the need is, we're going to support that.”
Despite Dearborn’s success, Wotruba said he didn’t expect to see another billion dollar bond on the ballot anytime soon.
As much as the eye-popping number is an investment in the future, it’s also a long-awaited supplement to decades of limited spending by Dearborn Public Schools, officials said.
“If you go back and look at their previous bond issues,” said Wotruba, “they haven’t done much.”
