Shortly after 9 am on Tuesday morning, a notification was sent to parents of Jones Middle School students. There was a water outage at the School located at corner of Wilshire and Indian Meridian. The school, also known as State Center, is located outside of the Town of Jones limits. Therefore, they do not receive water or wastewater services from the Town. Reliant on a water well to hydrate the campus, school officials commented on Facebook that repairs to the pump will be delayed until Wednesday morning.
Classes were kept open as students were provided with bottled water and bused to Jones High School for bathroom breaks. The school also reported a change in the lunch menu, serving corn dogs, Italian chef salad, and wow butter and jelly sandwiches.
This water outage comes just weeks after the announcement from the District of an upcoming bond election for the purchase land near the High School as a future site for the Middle School. Aging infrastructure and transportation costs for the current Middle School are just a few of the reasons given for the new proposal. The election will be held on November 14, 2023, and the proposed projects will not increase property tax rates* for residents. The ad valorem revenues from the 2019 Bond Election came in much stronger than originally estimated due to the increased property values in the Jones community. With the high demand for families to move into the Jones School District, real estate prices have boomed in the last four years. The 2023 proposal will allow the School District to purchase the land and upgrade school security by utilizing the surplus funds that are generated from the previous bond election.
*Correction: The original post stated the new bond election will not raise property taxes, but it is the ad valorem millage rate that will not increase.