Bryce Huefner Makes Garden City Elementary School Proposal

There was a discussion of two questions at our last school board meeting, March 27, which included:

1. Should we build a gym, a stage and two new classrooms at the middle school? It is estimated to cost $5-6.25 million.
2. Should we discontinue football?

I would like to explain my position on these two issues.

Building: Gymnasium, Classrooms and Stage

A proposal was made several months ago to look at building an additional gym at the middle school in order to relieve pressure on gym time, primarily during basketball season.  Saturday home games are an all-day event as there are typically 4 games played; 7th grade A and B teams, and 8th grade A and B teams.  The gym is heavily used during school hours for P.E. and elementary recess if the weather is bad.  It is scheduled pretty much from 8 am to 8 pm every school day November through February.  The school board, including myself, voted to do a cost analysis of the building.  My original “estimate” for cost was $1-2 million. The district currently has a capital building fund around $1 million that could be applied to the cost.

Wentworth Engineering presented plans for the proposed building which now includes two new classrooms and a stage in addition to the gym.  The estimated costs, depending on our final building requests, appear to be between $5.5 million and $6.25 million. 

I have given a lot of thought about new and developing demographics within Rich County and I recommended the board consider building an elementary in Garden City and using the existing elementary as growing room for the middle school. Elementary students from Laketown would be bussed to the new campus in Garden City. About 70% of the elementary students which attend NRE are bused from Garden City.  Garden City will continue to grow, and there is 40 years of census and population data to validate likely growth.  If you haven’t read my study of county demographics which I published 3 years ago, please take another moment and read it (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Nb3NgdosNtOtw_95v6PgSocXjb9wZoX3).

There are several advantages to building a new elementary in Garden City:

1. If an elementary school is built in Garden City only one bus would be needed to transport middle school students to the middle school and the same bus could bring elementary students from Laketown to the elementary in Garden City, thus eliminating one bus run (buses cost nearly $4/mile to operate) and saving 70% of the NRE students a 10-15 mile bus trip. 
2. Buying land in Garden City for a school is good planning.
3. The middle school could then use all the existing classrooms for middle school classes allowing for plenty of room to grow.
4. An elementary with a gym would allow for recess as needed.
5. Teams in the middle school athletic conference could play in the gym thus cutting the time spent for visiting teams in half.
6. Other:

Disadvantages of building an elementary in Garden City:

1. An additional campus may be more expensive to operate than keeping all expansions on an existing campus.
2. Possible additional cost for another administrator.
3. Increased travel time for Laketown elementary students.
4. Other:

How much would a new elementary cost to build in Garden City?  Alpine school district is building two elementary schools at a cost of $14-$16 million each.  These schools house 850 students each.  Our elementary student population is fairly constant at 130 students.  A small elementary with a gym may be in the range of $7 million. 

In the board meeting, it was questioned why we would build a new elementary in Garden City when the student population has not grown?  That was a good question and can be applied to the need for a new gym and added classrooms at the middle school.  If there is no growth and we insist on building, I think there is a strong argument for building in Garden City.  Garden City has shown steady growth for 40 years.  Garden City holds around 38% of the total student population in the county and around 70% of the NRE student population. 

I appreciate the board hearing my proposal and having a discussion on the alternate idea and I made a motion to have the engineering firm do a feasibility study on building an elementary in Garden City, and Scott Tolentino seconded the motion, but it failed on a 4-2 vote.  Then the board passed a motion to continue the process to build a gym on the existing middle school site which passed 5-1.  The next step is to try to procure land from the Town of Laketown because the proposed building encroaches on the West street by about 20 feet.  If the Town of Laketown agrees to the proposal then a bond cost for property owners will need to be done to give us an idea how much it will cost property owners.   If all moves forward then the board will need to vote, I think sometime in July, to send it to the November ballot.  

I will not support funding a $5.5-6.25 million building project in our school district when no serious effort is considered to look at other options.  We have been able to use existing buildings effectively managing the same problems for many years and since there is no growth we should not spend such a large amount of tax money at this time on building an additional gym, classrooms and stage at the middle school.

There is a lot more information and there was a lot more discussed in the board meeting which helped shed light on our board members perspectives.  Unfortunately, the board meeting was not recorded, which I am disappointed about.

Questions to consider:

1. What do you think of this issue? 
2. Should we consider building a $5-$6 million facility at this time? 
3. Should we consider building a basic metal building? 
4. Should the district plan for the future? 
5. The current bond will expire in 2022 (I think), should we wait until then to build anything?

Discontinue Football

Coach Brown resigned as football coach.  I would like to thank Coach Brown for his years of service.  Though I love to watch football, I have long been concerned about safety.  With the resigning of coach Brown, I thought it was an appropriate time to tender the idea of discontinuing the sport.  There are not many 1A schools playing football and so many schools we play are 2A in every sport except football so they are larger schools.  We have to travel great distances 6-10 trips a year and this often requires overnight stays which is generally something I think we should avoid. 

Surprisingly, football is not the most expensive sport in cash outlay in our school as both men’s and women’s basketball cost more but, what are the long term costs of football injuries?  I recently talked to a parent who indicated their son is still experiencing headaches which they attribute to a concussion suffered during a particularly rough football game several years ago. 

I suggest we seriously consider other sports which could replace football such as: cross country, baseball, volleyball and others.  I think it is only a matter of time before a high school or an entity like UHSAA is sued because of an injury a student sustained playing football.  If we begin now to move away from football we can avoid possible lawsuits and establish ourselves in other sports.

We had a 10 minute discussion about the possibility of moving to another sport and some other great points were made supporting my concerns and also other good points supporting maintaining the football program.  I hope we can be wise about the activities we provide for our students.

Questions to consider:

1. Should we continue our football program?
2. Are there other sports programs you would like to see?

Thank you for taking your valuable time to read this.  Please contact me with your thoughts.  These can be sensitive issues.  Let us be kind in our remarks and conversation online, in public and even private.  We can disagree but, let us strive to not be disagreeable. 

Bryce Huefner

Rich County School Board District 4