Photo by Deb Gau Marshall Superintendent Scott Monson presented information on Marshall Public Schools’ upcoming building referendum during a public meeting Thursday night.

MARSHALL — Representatives of the Marshall Public School District laid out more details of the projects included in the upcoming building bond referendum, in the first of two public informational meetings. School officials said the level of engagement local residents were showing at Thursday night’s meeting was a positive sign.

“It’s good to see as many people as we do this evening,” said Marshall Superintendent Scott Monson. More than 20 people attended the meeting. Informational meetings for the district’s 2016 bond referendum didn’t have as good of a turnout, Monson said.

Marshall school officials and school board members led Thursday’s meeting, giving an overview of the proposed building projects and building bond referendum, and answering audience questions along the way.

The referendum, which will be held April 18, will have two questions, Monson said. The first question will include bonding for $39.415 million, to build a new elementary school for grades 2-4 and expand parts of other Marshall schools. The second question will include $1.025 million in bonds to renovate the vacant swimming pool facilities at Marshall Middle School to multipurpose space.

“If question number one does not pass, then question number two is irrelevant,” Monson said.

Ballots for early voting in the referendum will be available starting today at the school district office, Monson said.

Monson said the building projects proposed in the referendum will address issues like security, classroom space and needs for early childhood education.

“For us, it comes back to the needs in our district,” he said.

Space needs were something that needed to be addressed across the board, speakers at the meeting said. Park Side Elementary has used portable classrooms in addition to existing ones for about a year.

“It works OK, but there’s lost instructional time” in getting children to and from the classrooms, Monson said.

At Marshall Middle School, classrooms have already been made out of a wrestling room and part of the school’s media center, said school board member Matt Coleman.

“We are running out of space,” he said.

At West Side Elementary, the problem wasn’t just space, but the age and cost of updating the building, speakers said. The school still has its original infrastructure for plumbing, heating and electricity.

“The boilers are original, and they need to be replaced,” said Bruce Lamprecht, director of business services for Marshall Public Schools. But the estimated cost of renovating the building, as well as adding six classrooms, would come to around $13 million. Building a new school would cost about $21.9 million.

The building projects included under the referendum would add classrooms, science and technology labs, and other educational space to Park Side Elementary, Marshall Middle School and Marshall High School. West Side Elementary would be replaced with a new school, located along Southview Drive.

Monson said the new school building would have 81,500 square feet of space.

“It’s not a huge building by any stretch of the imagination,” he said, and the district would also be looking for ways to be more cost effective in the building design — like having a combined gymnasium/cafeteria, for example.

The new school building would have capacity for 650 students. After renovations, Park Side would have capacity for 620 students, Marshall Middle School would have a capacity of 800, and Marshall High School would have a capacity of 1,050.

A second informational meeting on the referendum will be held at 6:30 p.m. on March 29, at Marshall Middle School.