By EMILY BEHLMANN

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ebehlmann@gctelegram.com

COPELAND -- With about 10 public meetings this school year, brochures, phone calls, a Web site, newspaper articles and general talk in town, supporters of a $4 million bond issue to replace most of South Gray Junior High School have "about exhausted every effort," according to USD 476 Superintendent Connie Claborn.

Bonnie Bennett, a member of the bond support group that calls itself "Rebels With a Cause," isn't taking any chances.

She and her daughter, Kimbra, were just finishing on Wednesday a poster they'll hang in the window of Bennett's business, Mikey's Auto Repair, that lists committee-determined facility needs at the junior high and reasons people should support the bond.

They're awaiting a Tuesday vote on a proposal that many residents say they support, but some indicate is too expensive.

The funds would be used to build and equip 10 classrooms (each at least 900 square feet, more than twice current classroom size), five administrative offices, a work room, a counselor's office and a gym, according to preliminary floor plans.

The new structure would stand adjacent to the current building's gym, which would remain intact to provide two gyms for simultaneous girls' and boys' sports.

The rest of the 1919 school would be razed after the new school is completed.

Kimbra Bennett, a Garden City Community College student who attended South Gray Junior High, said she thinks the building is needed in part because of overcrowding.

The halls were "jam packed" when she went to school there, and things haven't gotten better, she said.

In fact, they've gradually gotten worse, according to teacher Pam Watkins. She said it's difficult for students to access lockers when the hall is so full, and last year, the school had no other place to add lockers but in the girls' bathroom.

The crowding started when the Copeland district entered an interlocal agreement with USD 371 Montezuma in the 1991-92 school year, Claborn said.

Under the agreement, the districts' students stay in their hometowns for elementary school.

Then, all go to South Gray Junior High School in Copeland for sixth through eighth grade, and then South Gray High School in Montezuma for ninth through 12th grade.

The Copeland school district's taxpayers fund the junior high and other USD 476 facilities, while Montezuma's taxpayers fund South Gray High School and other USD 371 buildings.

Only those who live within the Copeland district will be voting on Tuesday, even though middle school students from both districts would be using the building.

When students from the larger town of Montezuma moved in, the building that the bond issue funds would replace went from serving as a high school to serving as a junior high.

It now only serves three grade levels, but enrollment is 88 students this year, up from 40 to 50 before the agreement, Claborn said. Officials expect a 10-student increase next year.

Sandy Koehn, a bond issue supporter and 1970 graduate from the Copeland district, said she remembers there being about 12 students per class when she attended the building. Now, kids are "squeezed in like sardines" with at least twice as many in a class, she said.

Supporters say the new building also is needed because the current school isn't fully handicapped-accessible, and while it meets other safety codes, it is grandfathered in on some requirements that it would have to meet if any major remodeling were conducted.

Claborn said now that the community is educated on the needs supporters have presented, she is positive about how Tuesday's vote will go.

However, a few residents said they opposed the bond issue, though they didn't want to be named in the newspaper.

One cited concerns about the cost of the proposal at a time when some analysts say the United States is in a recession.

Food prices are on the rise and the national average price of a gallon of gas on Monday was $3.26, up 65 cents from a year ago, according to the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration.

The bond issue would raise residents' taxes by 21.9 mills for 25 years. For the owner of a $100,000 home, that's $251.85 a year, or $20.99 a month.

Bonnie Bennett acknowledges there will be a cost -- "you can't do anything for nothing" -- but says replacing the junior high still makes economic sense.

The school is Copeland's biggest employer, with about 45 employees in the district out of a city population of about 340, and having it is good business for people like her, she said.

Mikey's Auto Repair serves the school, as well as its employees.

She said that if USD 476 can't get a school built, she expects someone else will.

Perhaps the district would be absorbed by Montezuma, and then Copeland taxpayers would have to shoulder the debt of a junior high building there.

"It's about our future, about the future of the community," Bennett said.

Koehn said she doesn't think the community has much choice on the issue if it wants to remain viable.

"It has to pass," she said, or Copeland is likely to lose its school.

"Our property wouldn't be worth anything, but we'd still have to pay property taxes," Koehn said. "We'd lose our town, our identity."