Voters in the Wayne Central School District will go to the polls next month to decide whether the district should go ahead with a more than $47 million construction plan.

The proposal calls for improvements and some classroom additions to the high school and paving upgrades at Wayne Middle School. The main portion of the project is combining three elementary schools into one.

"We can no longer afford to support three separate elementary buildings, three separate cafeterias, three separate gymnasiums, three separate offices,” explained Superintendent Mike Havens. “So we're combining our proposal for March 9th to combine our three elementary buildings into one building so we can continue to provide programs to our children."

A new elementary school would be constructed on the site of the current Ontario Primary School on Ridge Road. Parents believe the new building will provide their children with more teacher time than they're getting now.

"Right now we have teachers traveling between Freewill, Ontario Primary and Elementary,” said Tina Cieplinski. “A lot of our speech providers, they'll have more time with the children in one building instead of using their time to travel. We'll have more teacher time with children."

The proposed construction project will also include a wind turbine. It would be built near the high school and middle school campus and is expected to save the district around $135,000 a year in energy costs."

The turbine would be 246 feet tall, similar to the one at Harbec Plastics on Route 104 in the town of Ontario. District officials say it will provide 55 percent of the high school's electricity. However the energy produced by the turbine would not be limited to the high school alone.

"We now have net metering. So we'll pump it into the high school but it will go out in the grid,” Havens said. “Our meters will actually run backwards during the nighttime when we're not using so much electricity, it will be credited to us, a credit to all our different accounts wherever we need it. It will be connected to the high school but it will benefit the entire campus."

The project will cost more than $47.4 million but will not increase school taxes. Havens says it will be paid for with state aid and money the district has saved specifically for this project. He says it will end up saving the district $1million a year.

Wayne Central School District