Greetings!
Last night, on Tuesday, December 6, the Spring Lake Park District 16 School Board authorized a bond referendum of $95.9 million for a major facilities improvement plan to repair, renovate, and construct school district facilities. The referendum will be held on Tuesday, February 28, 2006, approximately three months from now. If the project is approved by voters, it will cost the average homeowner in District 16 about 50 cents a day.

The Board’s decision was not unexpected; in fact, it has been long awaited. The project began in March 2004, when the District contracted with engineers and architects to inspect and assess its schools and facilities.

The study gained momentum – and considerably more community exposure -- once a Community-School Task Force began meeting in February 2005. The Task Force completed its assignment in November. The Board’s action on December 6 reflects completely the recommendations of this Task Force, but the Board also included in their plans additional construction at Woodcrest Elementary School that was previously discussed, but not an a viable option at the time of the Task Force study.

The Board decision to authorize a bond election goes hand-in-hand with anticipated approval by the MN State Department of Education for the project. In addition to achieving our many objectives for the future, our project is expected to comply with state guidelines that address and correct critical issues.

A successful bond referendum is the foundation of the School District’s long-range facilities utilization and improvement plan to meet all of today’s standards while anticipating needs well into the future.

The bond referendum would also enable the District to handle significant present and anticipated population student growth, as well as to complete the maintenance needs left over from the bond issue ten years ago. The bond funds will repair and modernize these old structures (buildings aged between 34 and 50 years old), including replacing and repairing old single-pane windows, original boilers, and worn out roofs.

From fall 2004 to fall 2005 alone, we experienced an enrollment growth of 200 students. The very real housing boom in Blaine, which will bring us over 800 new students, makes our district among the few that are actually experiencing a growth in student population, but it also requires additional classroom space. Funds will not only build a new elementary school in the fastest growing area of our school district, but will also create additional classrooms at the middle and elementary schools. Facilities--including gyms, cafeterias, athletic and fine arts areas--will be updated to serve an almost 20% increase in the student population.

The “high school complex,” which houses not only Spring Lake Park High School, but also Kenneth Hall Elementary, our Early Childhood Programs, Community Services, Learning Alternatives Programs, and the District Office, is woefully undersized and no longer meets today’s state guidelines.

According to John Ryberg, Facilities Specialist for the Minnesota Department of Education, there is too much activity on this site and, in order to meet even minimum standards and receive state approval of our facilities plan, the district must close Kenneth Hall Elementary School. However, the State Department will allow us to retain some of the school’s useable space — such as the cafeteria and gymnasium--for student and community use.

The district will also take down the 50 year-old sections of the high school and build a new, two-story section for classrooms, as well as consolidate and expand the physical education and fine arts areas. Some of the space gained will assist in providing more much-needed outdoor teaching stations for physical education, and it will also improve student safety and security at our school entrances and a safer traffic flow for buses and vehicles. In this plan, the new main entrance for the high school would be located on the east side of the school.

In a preliminary update to the School Board this past summer, a Task Force member commended the school district and its custodians for the tremendous effort in keeping the schools clean and running efficiently. However, he also reminded the district that many of the buildings have “already outlived their original intended life span.” Another Task Force member stated that now is the time for the district to complete the task it started ten years ago with its 1995 bond referendum and to prepare these facilities for the next generation of students.

The facilities study and its progress have been discussed in more than 50 public meetings within the last two years, and, now that the Board has authorized a bond referendum election, there will be more public meetings after the first of the year.

I encourage you to follow the progress of this discussion in the continual updates on the web site, stories in local newspapers, in upcoming district publications, and on cable television. Our web site has sections available to have your questions answered, to schedule a “coffee party” information session, or to sign up for facilities tours which will be scheduled after the first of the year. A series of community meetings will be announced in mid-December and scheduled throughout the month of January.

Dick Morin, a Fridley resident, parent of District 16 graduates, and a member of the Task Force, probably described our facilities needs the best with a comment at one of our community information meetings. He said that “it just gets more expensive the longer we wait. We need to step up to the challenge and do it right. These are our schools, our children, our responsibility.”