For more than a year, the Board of Education and the community have been engaged in a comprehensive facilities planning process. Each step of this process has brought forth new information and ideas that have led to a better understanding of our options for facilities planning.
During this process, the Board has been guided by two main principles. First, we realize that we cannot address all of our needs and wants within our budget, so we have instead prioritized and focused on our most urgent structural repairs and classroom improvements. Second, we want to create a facilities improvements plan that will benefit all of our students and families while continuing good stewardship of taxpayer dollars. To do so, we have pledged to create a plan that provides significant improvements to every one of our school buildings, and also includes a major project that will touch all students as they progress through our District.
We have now reached the crossroads of our planning process and must decide a path to take. On June 14 we had narrowed our choices to three basic options.
Option 1 ($55 million) contemplates renovations of the Middle School and major improvements and repairs to all of our schools, but would not qualify for state assistance.
Option 2 ($25 million) contemplates no action at the Middle School, no state assistance, but basic repairs and improvements to all of our buildings.
Option 3 ($55 million) calls for a new Middle School, major repairs and improvements to all of our buildings. This third option would qualify for about $6 million in state assistance.
Our consensus was the $25 million option will not adequately address the basic needs of our District nor provide any educational enhancement for our students. Additionally, it does not provide long term fiscal benefits for the District or our taxpayers and should be ruled out. Both of the $55 million dollar options will do a better job of addressing our immediate needs and can provide educational benefits to all of our students. Building a new Middle School is more cost-effective than interim repairs, will leverage some state funding, will reduce future operating costs, and will also will provide better educational space for our students, now and into the future. The $55 million approach also would enable us to make significant improvements and major repairs to all our aging school buildings and maximize the fiscal benefits to both our District and our taxpayers.
As a result, the Board at its June 14 business meeting authorized the District to commission a site study to examine the feasibility of where a new grade 7-8 structure could be located on the current Middle School campus. The site study will likely present three potential siting locations and concepts. We will continue to share new information as it becomes available, and continue to seek public input before any binding decision is made.
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