JACKSON -- The Jackson Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to submit to voters a $4.7 million bond issue proposal for construction of a sixth- and seventh-grade middle schools.

No increase in the school tax levy would be involved.

The board's regular meeting was postponed from last week to give the administration more time to prepare the final bond issue package for presentation to the board. The district must notify the county clerk by Feb. 9 if it wants to place the bond issue on the April 6 ballot.

If the bond issue is approved, site preparation would begin in April or May and actual construction of the $5.1 million school building would begin in September or October, explained School Superintendent Wayne Maupin.

In a statement to the board and an audience made up of members of the Middle School Committee and two school board candidates, Maupin said the bond issue was purposely sized and structured so that there would be no increase in the district's current $2.85 tax levy.

He said proceeds from the $4.7 million bond issue would be matched with $400,000 from the current 1992-93 budget, an estimated $200,000 interest on the bond proceeds, and another $100,000 that would come from the district's 1993-94 budget, for a total of $5.4 million. The total estimated building project budget is $5,355,653.

During the meeting, the building architect and Maupin reviewed the latest in a series of preliminary floor plans of the new middle school. "This is not a final floor plan, but we feel we're getting pretty close," Maupin said.

The new middle school is designed to relieve critical overcrowding that now exists at the R.O. Hawkins Junior High and a growing overcrowding problem at the nearby West Lane Elementary School. After the middle school is completed, the seventh grade would be taken out of the junior high school and the sixth grade would be moved from West Lane.

Maupin said the administration and building committee considered several alternatives to the middle school such as renovating the junior high school or moving the ninth grade to the senior high school, but none was feasible.

Although the base bid calls for only 20 classrooms - 10 each for sixth and seventh grades, architect John Dudley said he is confident that economic conditions are such that the contractors' bids would come in low enough so that four additional sixth-grade classrooms could be included in the overall project.

That apparently satisfied board members, who were emphatic that the building contain enough classrooms to meet the needs of the district into the future.

"We can't build something that suits our needs now; we need a building for the future, five to 10 years down the road," said school board President Jack T. Knowlan Jr.

"But we also want a bond proposal that we can sell to the voters, a program that we can say can be done without a tax increase. We have a low tax levy and a low debt service. We have paid off some of our bonded indebtedness and we can come back and build a school that is a real necessity for us."