Ames Community Facilities Committee Made Recommendation As Planned

The Ames Community Facilities Committee recommended Monday that the stick to the building plan board members approved in November but also suggested selling the GW Carver Avenue plot in rather than save it for a school.

Board members accepted the but made no decisions on whether to follow that advice.

A sub committee of the school board will meet at noon today at the school district office on Stanton Ave. to discuss use of the local option sales tax, a possible general obligation bond to rebuild and renovate the district's five operating elementary schools and school boundary changes. The board is under pressure to develop referendum language for a five-school plan soon so that a committee can collect the 1,700 signatures necessary to put the measure on a ballot in April.

A group of Fellows Elementary School parents came to the board in saying that they voted against a referendum because Fellows would have been built on 24^th Street. But some parents in Somerset have said they wouldn't vote for a plan that didn't include a school there.

The board's current long-range plan includes replacing three elementary school buildings — , and — and renovating and remodeling and .

The district would build a new three-section school at Meeker, renovate Sawyer into a three-section school, renovate Mitchell to a two-section school, replace Edwards with a three-section school on Miller Avenue and build a four-section school replacing Fellows on the Fellows site.

The plan also includes selling unused district property, renovations to the high school and developing the district's 24^th Street for athletic fields and administrative space.

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