MOUNT VERNON — After keeping its master facility plan off the ballot in November 2025, Mount Vernon City Schools has targeted May 2026 for a 1% earned income tax levy.
The roughly $138 million project plan includes a new auditorium at the high school and replacing five elementary schools with three new ones.
The district plans to keep the middle school and Twin Oak Elementary. If the levy passes, the district will go from six elementaries to four.
The income tax levy would raise about $6 million a year over about 30 years, according to Superintendent Bill Seder.
The Ohio Facility Construction Commission (OFCC) will pay $38,715,310 from its Classroom Facilities Assistance Program (CFAP) toward the project.
School district taxpayers would be on the hook for about $100 million.
Mount Vernon City Schools is one of four districts receiving funding from OFCC.
In a press release announcing the OFCC funding award, Sen. Andrew Brenner said he looks “forward to seeing this project’s completion and the benefits it will bring to the students and community in Mount Vernon.”
Brenner is a non-voting member of the OFCC.
According to the release, “The Ohio Facilities Construction Commission oversees the planning, development and construction of public K-12, STEM and Joint Vocational School district’s school renovation and building projects.”
Seder said there are several important things to note with the proposed income tax levy:
- It won’t tax pensions, retirement benefits, Social Security, or similar benefits. The idea is to be cognizant of community members on fixed incomes.
- The district will use this possible new levy solely for facility construction/renovation, not standard operations around the district.
- Mount Vernon City Schools will keep its operational property tax-based levy in place. Ideally, the district won’t revisit that levy until around 2030.
How the proposed levy came to be
The district worked with a facility planning committee for about a year. It held a community meeting in May 2025 and shared its findings.
Seder said that because the budget “wasn’t quite there,” and there was “still a lot of property tax up,” the committee decided not to go on the ballot in November 2025.
“Realizing that the [OFCC] was still in a position to offer us funds, we really felt like the spring would be the right time for us to go after this kind of levy and potentially meet our master facility planning needs,” Seder said.
The district also worked with David Conley of Rockmill Financial Consulting to review the area’s tax structure and develop a tax plan for the levy.
“[Meeting with Conley] really helped us understand that, quite frankly, Mount Vernon City Schools have been solely funded at the local level through property tax,” Seder said.
“That was such a big issue [this past summer] and still is. So, we took that information, restarted this master facility plan and decided that we would move toward an earned income tax to be put on the ballot in May.”
Seder said someone recently asked him what the district would cut if the levy was not going to pass last November.
“I had to say, ‘Nothing will get cut.’ This is about future-proofing our facilities for generations to come; this is not an operating levy that you would traditionally see,” Seder said.
The superintendent said the district had three tax levy options for the project: property tax, a traditional income tax and the decided-upon earned income tax.
The elementary school details
Seder said the OFCC deemed it would not put money toward five of the district’s six elementary schools based on their age, infrastructure and cost to renovate vs. the cost of building new.
If voters pass the levy, the district will close Wiggin Street, Columbia, East, Pleasant Street and Dan Emmett elementary schools.
Twin Oak and the middle school will remain operational.
Seder said the district has not purchased land for the three proposed new elementary schools, and the current elementary school locations are not options.
“The OFCC has some parameters around the size of space that you locate a new school. Traditionally, they like at least 10 acres plus one acre for every 100 students,” Seder said. “So, we would be looking at close to 15 acres [per school].”
Seder said the plan is to find locations in the corners of the district.
“Twin Oak is in our southern part of the district,” he said. “We’d probably be looking to find something in the eastern corridor, northern corridor and perhaps the western corridor to find the right kind of location and site that would meet those size requirements.”
However, the only exception besides Twin Oak might be Pleasant Street, which sits on about 10 acres.
Seder said the district will consider that property, but there are still a lot of could-it-be-done-like questions around it.
“Generally speaking, we will be looking at sites big enough that can have a good footprint for a school but also the kind of parking, transportation and parent pickup or dropoff things that are really important today,” Seder said.
A new auditorium and upgrades at the high school
The $138 million cost includes a proposed $14 million auditorium that the district plans to build at the high school. OFCC funding will not cover it.
Seder said the district must cover the auditorium costs, but will use OFCC’s contribution to fund other upgrades at MVHS.
“[MVHS’s upgrades] include a lot of general internal kinds of things — entrances, new finishings. When [OFCC] comes in, they really take a look at all of your current components, from electrical to plumbing to HVAC,” Seder said.
“We’ll do a cafeteria renovation as well. It gets pretty comprehensive, but a lot of it can sometimes feel behind the walls.”
If the levy passes, when do things start happening?
Seder said the district is preparing ballot language for the Knox County Board of Elections.
“[The ballot language] has to be to them by Feb. 4. We hope to get them that language even yet this week so that we meet all of the deadlines as we move through this process,” Seder said on Wednesday.
Seder said that, hypothetically speaking, once the levy passes, the design phase begins. Generally speaking, design takes about a year before breaking ground.
“Then after that, it could take a year or two years for all of those [projects] to be completed,” Seder said.
“I’ve asked several times, ‘Would they really build three elementaries all at once?’ And in some cases, with economies of scale, they can.”
The superintendent did not want to “over promise and under deliver.” However, in a nutshell, the process after the levy passes could be a one-year design/securing property phase, followed by breaking ground and then a year-and-a-half to two-year construction phase.
“It also could be phased in, where you get one [elementary school] started and you get to a certain point, and another one gets started. So that timeline can certainly change,” Seder said.
“You might even start renovations on the high school sooner, because the design for the high school renovations might be a little bit easier to pull together than the design of a brand new elementary.”
‘Why are we even doing this?’
It is no secret that the school district has some older buildings that many folks feel connected to.
However, Seder explained “five key drivers” that relate to growth in the district, financial responsibility and safety. Seder’s drivers are below:
- Mechanical systems, roofing and all of those things get to a point where you have to look toward doing something different.
- Changing teaching style includes a shift toward more collaborative, technology-driven, personalized teaching.
- Special education needs have grown immensely, hence the need for intervention and special education services which were not in the plans in the early 1900s.
- Operating four new buildings vs. six that are really old provides some improved savings.
- Safety was one of the top things every facility committee member mentioned. Addressing safety and security issues, such as entrances, that some of the buildings weren’t built or equipped for.
“We’re going to put together a video tour of each one of the buildings that will be replaced,” Seder said. “Just so people who haven’t been inside them can get a real sense for not only the neat parts of it, but the shortcomings that they have as well.”