As I mentioned before, I’m on the school board and the economic development authority in my town. On Monday evening, a meeting of the school board, the economic development authority members and the city council was held to discuss our shared vision for the town, so I was there to share in the French Dip sandwiches and the discussion. I was fearful the loose format for the discussion was going to lead to accomplishing little, and unfortunately that’s what happened. Each group gave a 15 minute presentation about what it’s been up to, and that was good but the following discussion was pretty random.
After some discussion about what we wanted the city to be, the question was posed, "do we want to be known as a bedroom community?" The school board chair answered, "No, we want to be the premier bedroom community." I think everyone agreed with that sentiment, but then we spent the rest of the discussion talking about how we could just get by. A brief look at the city’s history shows that the population peaked in the early 80s then went down throughout the late 80s and early 90s until a large investment was made in promoting the city as a bedroom community. After this investment and the establishment of housing developments, the population grew past its original peak to where it stands now. It was taking that chance and spending money that played a large part in the town’s growth (certainly the large migration of population to Fargo helped).
During the school presentation the superintendent outlined the many space/facility related challenges we face. The current high school was built in 4 different stages – 1933, 1953, 1967 and 1989. There is very limited parking, the roof leaks, the school is easily flooded and security is virtually impossible due to the number of doors in the facility. Not to mention the fact that our building wouldn’t meet code if we were ever to be examined. As far as space issues, we have no free rooms in the elementary school – music is "on wheels" and kindegarten is actually held at the high school. The early childhood education classes are all held outside of the two school buildings. We have engaged a facility consultant to help us determine the viability of the existing facilities and discuss our options for some kind of renovation or new building.
I reserve the right to change my mind, but at this point I think a good option would be to purchase addition land on the east border of the city for either a new school campus or for an athletic complex. If we build the new school there (I’d put a 9-12 school there) we could build an auditorium and have it start as the root of an eventual K-12 facility there (probably not for 30-50 years until everything goes out there). If we use this land as an athletic complex, it will meet our needs for additional space for baseball, softball and soccer and we’d move the football field and track there as well. That would free up the existing football field to serve as the location of the new building (just east of the K-6 building). If this were the case, I’d recommend we build a K-4 school there and move everyone up a school.
The two existing schools are a block apart today and there seems to be strong sentiment that we buy up the block in between and build additional facilities there. I understand the potential benefits of having a school complex all together, but the costs of this plan will be very high compared to finding another location. I ran the numbers based on the assessed value of the 10 homes on the block today, and it will cost $602K to purchase those houses (so I’m sure it will be over $1mil once we start buying them up) and it will gain us 1.78 acres in space. The owner of the last east of the city just sold 16 acres for $10K per acre, so if we bought 5 acres out there, it would cost us $50K (or maybe as much as $75K). That buys us a lot more building then the buy up the block plan. Also, to bring the buildings together we’d either need skyways between the buildings or we’d have to rip out a street and neither of those options are cheap.
Right now I feel like our school system is solid but not spectacular. If we’re really going to become the premier bedroom community, we need to have a school that compels people to come to town. I just don’t see how we can do this with aging, subpar facilities and standard curriculum. I’m finding the two things I’m most passionate about on the school board are facility improvement and high school reform. If we make progress in these areas our school could become a drawing card for families in the region. To get there, we can’t just talk the talk, we’re going to have to take a chance and spend some money.
Eric's space 