Bond 2025 Overview
AN OPEN LETTER TO BENTLEY AREA VOTERS
Bentley Community Schools has amazing students, staff, and alumni! From kindergarten through 12th grade, we have students involved in student council, robotics, visual and performing arts, athletics, early middle college, cooking club, skeet, and so much more.
OUR STUDENTS ARE INNOVATIVE! For example, Bentley students planned & facilitated a conference held at Wayne State University in 2023, 2024, and 2025 for high school students from across three counties!
OUR STUDENTS ARE SMART! For example, Barhitte Elementary reading achievement scores have increased from 2023 to 2025 by 150%! The 2022-2024 scores for BMS students’ MSTEP reading proficiency scores increased by 10.9% and BHS SAT reading scores improved by 10.7% with a graduation rate of 86%.
OUR STUDENTS ARE GOING PLACES! For example, our 2024 graduates were eligible for more than $450,000 in scholarships to pursue college and/or trade school!
A LITTLE HISTORY
Bentley Community Schools was incorporated in 1914 and constructed the current buildings in the 1950s. Since then, we’ve been graduating people who have gone on to become police officers, actors, doctors, lawyers, principals, teachers, judges, scientists, pilots, military personnel, welders, electricians, entrepreneurs, and more. And Bentley continues to graduate young adults who become critical-thinking, hardworking citizens…many of whom become leaders in their own right.
WHY IS THIS BOND PROPOSAL NECESSARY?
Bentley only has capacity for one room of 18 preschoolers. So, if you’re not one of the lucky few, then what? If your parents have the means and the vision, they find a way to get you into a preschool in another community—and once they leave, they’re much more likely to stay there, creating a permanent hole in this community, a dwindling student count. Moreover, that loss erodes the social fabric of our community. And for those children who don’t have the benefit of preschool…they simply don’t get that foundational life experience.
Our board of education has wrestled with this problem: how do we meet the needs of our youngest learners when we have nowhere to home them? An idea began to take root a year ago—McLaren Healthcare has several abandoned buildings adjacent to our campus. Could those buildings be used for early childhood education? For a community center? For alternative education? To fill some other community need?
Conversations were had with the board, educators, an architect, a civil engineer, GISD, others…and, of course, McLaren. A proposal was drawn up to use the McLaren buildings at 1198 N Belsay Road and McLaren decided to generously donate—to give—the three buildings and property to Bentley—because supporting our youngest citizens and the broader community was a vision they wanted to be a part of. The plan is to begin by renovating one building from a medical site to a preschool.
The bottom line is that Bentley Community School District needs to renovate a building to become a preschool to provide students with the facilities they need and deserve.
WHO WILL BENEFIT IF THIS BOND PROPOSAL IS APPROVED BY VOTERS?
In particular, preschool-age children. However, ALL students benefit from a great start! Moreover, these upgrades will positively impact our home values and minimize the number of youth leaving the area in order to access early education—in other words, helping us to retain our kids and fortify our neighborhoods.
WHAT WILL THIS BOND PROPOSAL COST?
If approved by voters, the bond proposal would result in no tax increase over the prior year’s levy and provide $2.9 million for this project with any remaining costs covered by the tail end of the current bond funds. The projected improvements will cost us approximately $3 million.
HOW DO I VOTE IN THIS ELECTION?
Registered voters living in the Bentley area can vote at the polls 7 AM – 8 PM on Election Day, May 6th, or by absentee ballot Mar. 27th – May 6th. You can register to vote and/or request an absentee ballot application from the Clerk's Office or by going online to Michigan Voter Information Center and clicking on Absentee Voting in the left column.
WHERE CAN I GET MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE BOND PROPOSAL?
Click on the links below, or in the menu under "Bond 2025".
Contact Dr. Kristy Spann, the Bentley Community Schools Superintendent.
On behalf of the Board of Education, thank you for your consideration of Bentley’s bond proposal.
Dr. Kristy Spann
Bentley Community Schools Superintendent
Click on the images above for a gallery of the proposed plan!