I'm Michael Balman, superintendent here at Lakeville Area Schools, and this evening want to talk about our bond uh that we're doing that's primarily focused on our middle schools. I want to start off just by re-establishing or sharing our mission. Uh this is what I tell and work with my staff on staying focused on our mission. And if you read our mission and our vision statement, one of the things it talks about is learning environments. And in order to create the conditions that we want to have in Lakeville area schools, we have to have the best learning environments that we can afford to get. And um one of the challenges that we're facing currently is a fourth grade class that's going to metriculate into our middle schools. And uh we're going to have over 3,000 middle schoolers and we have to have space for those middle schoolers. So uh in order to do that, that's what this bond is really focused on. Um, one of the most important things and for some of you that are in the room here that are volunteers or uh get involved in our community, thank you for doing that. Uh, I know it's it's a labor of love in some extent and then it's also a labor of frustration and I understand that as well, but thank you for the sacrifice and the time that you take to do that. We do appreciate it. Um we do survey our community when we talk about levies or bonds of any kind. Um we do that using Morris Leatherman which is a uh uh polling firm that does scientific surveys and uh want to share some of those results uh from this most recent survey. Um 90% say that the quality of our schools is excellent or good. We think that's a a good number uh a strong number for us uh that our community says that and feels that is uh positive. 87% say that the district does what is right. Um we want to be as high as we can possibly be in that kind of category uh because we do want to be perceived as doing the right thing and uh for the most part I think that that that resonates in our community. So, does that translate into success on a bond like this? Not sure, but uh I certainly would rather be in those numbers than much lower numbers. So, uh we'll see how this plays. Um next chart. The one thing that I feel strongly tells our story in Lakeville uh in in our school system is the growth that we're having not just in Lakeville, but Elco New Market and in Credit River. And if you look at the chart there, the red is Lakeville, the dark blue is Elco, New Market, and the light blue is Credit River. And uh having the growth that we're experiencing and projecting out to 2040 is our school district's challenge and problem. Uh we are going to grow and continue to grow as a community and uh as the city lays out their plans and hands out permits or authorizes permits um that implied re situation is that we're going to have more kids in our system and uh that doesn't get talked a lot about when these permitting decisions are being made. Uh but we certainly feel that challenge uh as a school system. So, uh, if you're Elco New Market City Council or Credit River or Lakeville City Council, these are things that are should be front and center as you're talking about it, but always implied is that we're going to have to grow. And growth means you have to have space for those those students to uh to come into the system. So, we want to be thoughtful and planful about that. We also want to be fiscally responsible in our response to try to uh manage that growth. This is the longer range picture that uh we've worked hard on over the last year and a half to make sure that uh we can articulate what our growth pattern looks like and uh you see it depicted there. The red line indicates what our buildings are in aggregate at 85% full. uh 85% is what we use as the marker because uh the other balance of that to the 100% is we have to fit in special ed and uh any other um space requirements to fit our students and staff in a building. So, uh, a lot of research has been done on, uh, what a building is, uh, and how it is laid out and how full it is versus how much space you can actually fit more people into. 85% you're feeling pretty full. And to give you a sense of that, right now, our Century Middle School is sitting at about 94%. So, if you look at that's about a 10% overage, 9% overage, um, and makes things very, very difficult for us. Uh and we're on that we're on that glide path for all of our elementary schools unless we do something about it. The something is a bond uh to do and put put additions into our schools and improve the uh common area spaces across our middle schools so that we can actually fit our students in there. Uh the other part of this was we did a boundary adjustment uh recently and that's going to help the combined effect of that is to be able to fit our students into our middle schools uh coming up here. So the next chart will show you what our middle school picture looks like with a 8% growth uh that we're projecting out uh over the next 5 years. So, we want to be able to fit that uh those students in there and make room for our staff to be able to operate effectively in a uh in a learning environment that works for all of our students and all of our staff. Uh here's a another way to look at that. If we did nothing, this picture shows us what we would look like in terms of percentage of fill that we would be dealing with um over the next several years. So, uh that capacity at 85% is what that red line represents. And so, you can see that we would have some growth going on there as high as 111% um in 2829. So, that's what we're trying to mitigate. And the picture we're trying to create is right here. uh trying to create some room and some space. One of the challenges we have when we get the plans from the cities and we look at uh what the growth is going to be, what we can't control is the pace of that growth all the time. Now, yes, they do project that, but they also interdict that. Um one of the things that's going on right now in the southwest side of Lakeville, Traditions is going to be putting in a uh a um residential area. they're going to put the uh sewer lines and all that in there and that's ahead of schedule of what they initially programmed, but we'll have to deal with that. So, it's those kinds of things that we want to be able to account for that variation that could occur inside of their long range predictive plan. So, uh, I just want to make sure that everybody understands that we're trying to create that space with additions to get us to the, uh, able to deal with that variation that we may have to deal with coming in the next few years. So, one of the things that, uh, I think is important to articulate is that this facilities planning process is ongoing. We're trying to uh, continue. For the last decade, uh, Lakeville Schools has received guidance, uh, from a facilities advisory group. Uh, there is support for our decision- making that we're trying to be more robust with as we move forward here. Uh, I can tell you that the facilities vision plan 2035 is what we are working on now. Uh, this is the more immediate need and the more uh, clear and present challenge for us and that's what we're trying to mitigate. But based on the needs that we have identified and looking down the road because obviously these middle school kids are going to move out to high schools, right? So we have to plan ahead for that. I want to predicate our planning designing with regard to facilities on a teaching and learning strategy that's more long-term and uh build off of that. So that's the work we're doing now uh to try to uh get our long range facilities plan aligned with our teaching and learning. So I think uh there's a short video here that also articulates some of the things I've just said and some of the things that uh are ahead here. So if we would uh go ahead with the video. The Lakeville area continues to grow and that growth is something many of us see every day. Lakeville itself is the thriving popular community recently named the fastest growing suburb in Minnesota. Over the past decade, nearly 9,000 new homes, town homes, and apartments have been built across the Lakeville area. During that same time, student enrollment increased by more than 12,200 students. The growth is visible. It's not always as visible to the public is how this rapid growth is impacting our schools, especially at the middle school level. Since 2018, with the support of our community, we added space at the elementary level to accommodate enrollment growth. Those elementary students are now moving into our middle schools. All three middle schools, Century, Kenwood Trail, and Maguire, are already crowded. And middle school enrollment is projected to grow by more than 8% over the next 5 years, adding approximately 250 additional students, which is equal to eight new classrooms. As enrollment increases, space becomes more limited, classrooms become crowded, common areas become congested, and schedules become more complex. These conditions strain learning environments, student support services, and overall school climate. And this will continue without additional space. This is why the district has placed a bond referendum on the May 12th ballot for additions and renovations to all three middle schools. The proposed plan is designed to alleviate the capacity strain on current students and teachers and make room for the students who are on their way. This plan will create functional spaces that support learning for all middle school students, regardless of the school they attend. Improvements include making classrooms bigger, adding flexible learning areas, updating specialized spaces for art, music, facts, and STEM, special education, and gymnasium additions to support physical education and activities. The plan would also include expanding cafeterias, kitchens, and other common spaces. The estimated tax impact is approximately $14 per month on a $500,000 home. Strong schools are a cornerstone of strong communities. As our community continues to grow, our schools must keep pace to maintain the quality education our community values. We encourage residents to visit our website for more information. Early voting begins March 27th and election day is May 12th. So, if it's approved, and I think uh some of those items were uh addressed earlier in the video, but uh we want to make sure that we have the comparable learning environments that the additional classroom and gymnasium spaces there. uh the common areas and the renovations are focused on the common areas because as you have more students in the building uh you know whether it's cafeteria or gym space uh or just movement through the hallways and those kinds of things have to be uh level set so that they can handle the the number of kids that we're going to have there. Um the other thing is our specialist areas, right? And and we listed those off there. Our STEM band, choir, fax. Fax is our um homec is the old term for it. I'm trying to think of what the acronym stands for. >> Family and consumer science. >> Okay. Uh say that again louder. >> Family and consumer science. >> That's right. U and then visual arts and media arts. So these are all things our kids obviously uh participate in and get learning opportunities from our special education classrooms and uh those are always a challenge and we want to make sure that those are optimized in those buildings. Uh also doing group learning uh is is another facet of the education process that we want to make sure we're enhancing and u maintaining at a proper level for our kids. So, uh, flexible furniture, uh, and flexible spaces, I think, contribute greatly to that. Kitchens and cafeterias, um, I don't know if you've been to Century lately, but it's, uh, it's pretty tight. Um, Kenwood Trails has always been pretty tight. Uh, and we want to make sure that we can handle more kids and do that in a more streamlined manner. So, uh, some of the schools like I don't know if you've been around Meguire or JFK and pick up and drop off, it's kind of challenging back there. Uh, so we want to see if we can do some uh improvement to that situation. Uh, and more parking space uh up at Kenwood Trail, I think, is also on the menu. So, uh, next chart. This shows you uh the dark blue is uh additions and the light blue shows you renovations. This is century. Um and you can see again that our special ed stem uh wood shop there the or yeah the wood shop and um remodeling the kitchen and cafeteria is what you see in the light blue. And then adding classroom space and addition to their cafeteria so that uh they have more space and can get more kids through the system faster uh is what we we have to do to that school. And then Kenwood Trail uh gym and uh renovations inside uh you can see in the light white at the top uh on the lower level and main level and upper level. All three of those charts show some improved uh parking space. There's tennis court uh to be added there. Uh they only have the one uh the other schools have more. So, we're trying to get that level set. So, those are some things there uh for Kenwood Trail. And then Meuire. Um again, some additions, classroom space additions, uh an auxiliary gym, a locker uh improvement, and then the cafeteria space. Uh I guess in all fairness that's pretty tight too uh for their school e even as it is right now. Um so we need to expand there and do some renovations and interior classrooms in that school. So those are the things we're trying to do. Uh this is just general concept. Uh the design process will involve more folks. Uh you get into that if the bond passes and you get into an accelerated process of doing the actual design. So that would be an important next step. So tax impact, what we actually did here is broke it down for a variety of different uh uh homes. The median is 500,000 in Lakeville right now. That's why we uh had that in the video, but this gives you a little bit more of a disagregation of what uh the cost could could be on residential property. And then if it fails, uh our biggest challenge is going to be uh increased class sizes and some uh challenging u overcrowding is about the only word I can articulate for it. Um we're we're dealing with that a lot right now at Century Middle School. Um it's very tough, but um you know, we'll we'll deal with what we have to deal with. um the limited course offerings and some of the challenges with our scheduling will come into play. Um and then increasing need space for uh increasing need for space while construction costs increase over time is kind of like okay we got to do something now. Uh we know the kids are coming. Um if we delay and go to the right on the calendar we have this situation and we're going to have increased costs uh down the road. So, um, again, it's about having a fiscally responsible strategy, uh, to the extent that we can bring that to the four. So, that's what we're trying to do. The ballot question asked for 139,600,000 to do the improvements and the uh uh additions on these schools. I guess I could, if you go back a second, I guess I could uh address some people uh postulated building a whole another middle school. Um the numbers don't support that. um for a variety of reasons. The cost of that my estimate would be if the the way you would build another middle school is and be as responsible as you can be with that is you would take one offline, maybe build a new middle school bigger, but you have to do land acquisition for that. You have to obviously in a contemporary environment build a new school that takes 36 months minimum. Uh and then you would have to be repurposing a middle school to maybe take some of the lease space that you have in the district offline or put some other things into that building and that would require a tenant improvement or a major renovation to fit something else in. in that condition, I could see you doing it. That my estimate on that is between 230 to $250 million. Um, I don't think the numbers support that. Um, at this point in time, and that's why we're we did do this strategy with elementary. We did end up having to build High View Elementary. Uh, but the numbers proved that you needed to do that and so we did that incrementally and I think that strategy worked for us as a as a school system and from a cost factor. Um, and I think it's going to serve us for a while into the future. Uh, at the time we did uh talk about High View, the talk was build two two elementary schools, not just one. But I think the additions plus the elementary school has proven out to be a winning strategy uh for us and a fiscally responsible way to do this. So um do I think we're going to have to do something with high schools? Yes. Uh couple years from now uh that that's probably going to be a need for us. But I think we have to do that in a bigger picture environment and not necessarily uh look at it as just what are we going to do with our high schools. In my view right now looking at the numbers, it's probably additions like we're doing with middle schools, but I think there's a bigger question like what are we going to do with ALC? What challenges do we have with special education and and setting three and four that can't be accommodated by 917 or intermediate? So these are questions we want to bring uh to community discussions uh moving forward. So that's coming. Uh yeah, so voting is on May 12th. Uh we have early voting starting March 27th uh through May 1st right here at the district office. Uh and you can see the hours there. And then early uh voting by mail, that's how you get your ballot. And then we will be operating uh polling sites from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 pm on May 12th. So that's uh the voting opportunities you have.