Vacaville school bond committee forms

With some members saying Vacaville's future is at stake, a new committee of volunteers has formed to mount an outreach and informational campaign for a possible $194 million school bond measure in November.

The Committee Supporting Vacaville Schools 2014 held its first meeting Monday and plans another the first Monday after the next Vacaville Unified governing board meeting, July 17, if trustees approve a pending resolution.

"We're waiting for the board to give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down," said Nolan Sullivan, a committee co-chair and president of the Vacaville Public Education Foundation, which raises money for Vacaville's public schools.

At its June 26 meeting, the seven-member board gave no indication whether or not it would adopt the resolution, as written in a draft they reviewed; however, several trustees noted a need to upgrade technology and the district's 16 campuses, nearly one-half of them 50 years old or older, with several of those 60 years old or older.

Interviewed Wednesday, Sullivan alluded to the district's many aging campuses as one reason the committee volunteers came together earlier this month. Besides Sullivan, they include Mary Woo, committee co-chair and a Will C. Wood High teacher and cross country coach; former Vacaville Mayor Len Augustine, the committee's honorary chair; and Ernest Kimme, a former teacher and Vacaville City Council member, a columnist for The Reporter, and supporter, like Woo, of a proposed new stadium for Wood High.

Sullivan, 31, by day a manager at the Yolo County department of social services, said the bond measure's passage would determine the educational experience for a generation of the city's children and, thus, affect the city's future.

"Our kids are going to directly benefit from this bond," he said. "It's going to directly impact us."

If approved by the VUSD board, then passed by voters on Nov. 4, the money will be used to upgrade regular classrooms, repair or replace portable classrooms, install energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, provide for campus modernizations (infrastructure upgrades, roofing and plumbing repairs, for instance), provide for wi-fi technology upgrades at all campuses, pay for the construction of a 2-story classroom building at Vacaville High, and the building of a football stadium at Wood High, one of only two Solano County high schools without its own football field for athletic events, graduations and other uses.

Woo said the bond measure will pay for "facilities districtwide where children can thrive."

"We're going to need the bond measure to pay for major projects the scope of the projects is just so huge," she said.

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Vacaville school bond committee forms