MARYSVILLE — In response to the failure to pass a $78 million bond issue in February, the Marysville School District Board of Directors voted March 8 to run a drastically reduced $32 million bond issue on April 27.

This bond would replace and equip Cascade Elementary, modernize technology systems and equipment, make basic repairs to the Marysville-Pilchuck pool, as well as health and safety improvements, and cover pre-planning site and facility analysis.

Board Directors Michael Kundu and Darci Becker had excused absences. Fellow Board Directors Chris Nation, Sherri Crenshaw and Cindy Erickson all voted in favor of this revised bond, albeit only after all three expressed strong reservations about it.

“Seven years ago, the Cascade and Liberty elementary schools were identified as being in critical need,” Nation said. “They’ve only gotten older since then, but we haven’t moved forward as a district to fix them.”

Erickson agreed with Nation, but voiced her discomfort with another bond option, which would have covered both Cascade and Liberty. She noted that it’s been 20 years since bond improvements have been made on the middle school level, and by removing Marysville Middle School from a bond that would still cover two elementary schools, she expressed the concern that voters might see this as unfair toward middle schools.

“If we only have one school on the bond, it might help us with those voters,” Erickson said.

Like Erickson and Nation, Crenshaw emphasized that she would like to rerun the previous bond without removing any of the schools, but she did not believe that voters would pass such a measure.

“The voters told us that our previous bond was not good enough,” Crenshaw said. “Cascade is our number-one problem school.”

The district’s Citizens Planning Committee likewise identified Cascade as the most in-need school on the previous bond issue.

“We have to keep going with this,” Nation said, pointing out that passing even a reduced bond would keep the district’s facilities office open.

“I still feel that the $78 million bond is the best deal we can get,” said Dean Ledford, a Tulalip Tribal member and Marysville School District grandparent. “It would have been a fantastic package, with low interest and a ‘stimulus’ for our local workers. But we need to get something else going.”