VALLEY CITY, N.D. (NewsDakota.com) – Last week, the school board approved calling for a $46 million referendum to build a new school that would be connected to Jefferson Elementary School. A vote of the citizens of the school district will occur on June 10, 2025. For this referendum to pass, a 60% super majority will be required. In the next 68 days, we will be hosting public meetings, sharing information, and answering questions. We are committed to answering every question to the best of our ability and ensuring that the voters have the information they need to make an informed vote on this referendum. If you haven’t visited our webpage for referendum information, please do so at https://www.hiliners.org/o/vcsd/page/referendum. We will continue to add new information in the weeks and months ahead.
Public Meetings
We will be hosting four public meetings and four Q & A sessions between April 22nd and June 5th. I’ve attached the dates/times/locations of these meetings and also added a link for this info at https://www.hiliners.org/o/vcsd/page/informational-meetings. Please plan to attend any one of these meetings to learn more about the proposed project.
Enrollment
Undoubtedly, enrollment has been a hot topic in our community over the past few years. We continue to graduate more seniors than our enrolling kindergarteners leading to a decline in student enrollment. I’ve attached a chart showing our enrollment trends in the past five years. Recently, I was asked two questions related to our student enrollment. First, what can we do to stop student enrollment losses? Our school district will do whatever we can to stop an enrollment loss. We are currently exploring a free 4-year-old pre-kindergarten program that we believe may be a causing a decline in enrollment. We know there are 4-year-old VC students currently attending free pre-kindergarten programs in our surrounding school districts. We should know more in the next month if we will receive a state grant for a new pre-kindergarten program at VCPS. Second, why do we need a new school if our enrollment is declining? We believe a new school connected to Jefferson Elementary will address several district priorities related to the quality of educational needs of our students and also create efficiencies and cost-savings for our school district. Besides improving safety and security at our school entrances, a new school would ensure proper accessibility (ADA) for all students and modernize educational learning spaces for students that align with 21st Century school expectations. The proposal would also right size our schools by decreasing the square footage of our buildings by more than 60,000 sq/ft., which will allow us to both align to our current enrollment but still allow enough space for future growth in our school and community.
Maintenance
Another hot topic, especially on Facebook, has been our facility maintenance needs (or deferred maintenance). A common question has been, why hasn’t the district been maintaining the schools? First, I will argue that past and current school boards, facility directors, and custodians have been doing what they can with the resources available to best maintain our schools. Unfortunately, when faced with aging schools, the annual allocation of funds from a building or general fund cannot keep up with the major maintenance needs of an aging school (i.e boilers, piping, electrical, ADA, roofs, security, etc.). Our schools, as you already know, are old by comparison to other schools and buildings in North Dakota (1919, 1940, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, etc.). Our schools, like anything else that ages, require more and more money to maintain and function properly. Do you spend $37 million to repair or $46 million to replace? We have reached a point with these systems that they cannot be repaired, and they need to be replaced, costing the school district millions of dollars. These necessary dollars cannot be accessible or attained without a successful vote of the citizens of our community and a subsequent increase in property taxes. Our advisory committees and school board believe it is more fiscally responsible and better for future generations of people living in Valley City, to replace the old with a new school connected to Jefferson Elementary. This is what will be voted on by the citizens on June 10th. If the referendum doesn’t pass, the school board will need to look at other options, including a repair, to address the major maintenance and systems in our aging schools.
Please plan to attend an upcoming public meeting for more information about this proposal. We will continue to welcome your questions, and the opportunity to provide you with factual, transparent, and timely information. Again, we kindly ask you to visit our webpage at https://www.hiliners.org/page/referendum for more information about the referendum. You can also contact us by sending an email to vcps.referendum@k12.nd.us for questions or requests for presentation.
