[Music] as we kick off the school year and we have a lot of conversations occurring around the bond and our technology Levy we don't want anything to get in the way of students starting back to school our theme this school year is be amazing high five to a great school year we are so fortunate to have such incredible kids in our school district uh I started in the district in 1991 and I remain in the district because of the connections and the relation ships and the incredible work that we do as a system last August of 2022 we were not successful with our bond referendum question and we needed to take a pause we got to the plan that our voters are going to see this November through a very extensive process of listening and that process started with listening sessions it was an opportunity for our community to tell us what they liked about the plan what they didn't like about the plan along with listening sessions we conducted a new demographic study what does the growth look like over time in South Washington County schools and then finally we did a community survey and the plan coming forward in November will have none of our schools closing we look at our scaled back plan is this is really a result of our community speaking and what their priorities are on the ballot this November our voters are going to see three questions the first two questions are considered Bond questions and those questions get at Safety and Security in the school district as well as growth and other additional needs our question three is a capital projects letter that will be focused on technology question one focuses on Safety and Security and that means taking a look at our secured entryways in some of our schools when families and visitors enter they actually enter into what we consider to be the learning space and we want to make sure that as visitors and guests come into our schools they have to not only enter the front vestule but they also then are greeted into the office and not into the learning spaces in addition it will take a look at the growth of our high schools and additions at Eastridge and Olman middle school and then finally there will be Renovations at our high schools and uh one of our middle schools one thing we heard through our community survey is that the tax tolerance um is not real high in the district because our families and our community members pay a lot in taxes we were very intentional about making sure that we honored and respected what our community said and what they could afford our question two um addresses the growth at our elementary schools and we have a number of elementary schools that are exceeding capacity question two really gets at providing additions to those schools question two also will add on additional bathrooms we have some 1960 schools that have one set of restrooms students who are waiting in line to use the bathroom are not in the classrooms learning should question to not be successful we would be looking at attendance boundary changes for our elementary schools to be implemented in 2024 the passage of question two is contingent on the passage of question one our capital projects Levy is actually a question three another way to look at that would be our technology Levy and what our residents are going to see across the state is that many school districts are looking for a dedicated source of funding to help support techn techology residents within our community may think of technology and think about student devices the bigger part when we talk about technology is really around the Safety and Security we talk about the cyber attacks the fishing scams we want to make sure that as a district that we have dedicated funding for technology and our capital projects Levy would allow us to increase what is currently at 2.8 million to increase that to $5 million so that for the most part our technology cost as a school district would be funded through this technology Levy as a result of the feedback we receiv and from our listening sessions we know that it's important that we do our part in communicating with our residents and we also hope that our community does their part in paying attention and staying engaged with us election day is Tuesday November 7th 2023 early in-person voting begins Friday September 22nd and ends Monday November 6 we want your voices at the [Music] table