Grain Valley School Community,
Our district continues to grow. As projected, we have just
under 4000 students in pre-Kindergarten through 12th grades,
including 1025 students in our high school this year. This is twice as many students in our
district as we had just 11 years ago. By
our projections, we will need room for 1275 students at the high school by the
fall of 2017, and for 1600 students at our high school within about another six
years.
I ask for your support with the passage of a $3.8 Million
bond issue on the ballot for February 4, 2014 to allow us to continue the next
phase of work to our high school as outlined in our district’s long-range plan
to meet the demands of a growing student population. Passage of this bond issue
does not require raising the district tax levy rate.
We have also identified the need to improve the safety and
security of our school buildings and are including work to six of our schools
and to our administrative offices to improve our ability to screen school visitors. Once completed, visitors to any of our sites
will only be able to access the rest of the school after first entering the
office.
This year’s bond issue for $3.8 Million will allow us to:
1. Construct four classrooms to the south side of
the high school, just west of the science rooms added with last year’s bond
issue. These will be larger classroom spaces for engineering and industrial
technology. The current industrial technology room will be converted to a loading
dock, kitchen and building storage, and will include a corridor allowing access
to the new classrooms.
2. Relocate and upgrade utilities at the high school
to support the long-range plan at this site.
3. Security upgrades to school entrances at six schools and administrative office building.
4. The completion of a greenhouse on the south face
of the high school is included as an alternative bid with this bond issue.
Future additions at the high school will require the
relocation of our transportation center and bus lot, which we have also
outgrown, to make room for a larger high school school
building, more activity practice facilities, and more parking for school and
activity use.
We intend to begin construction on a new transportation
center in the summer of 2014, on the northeast corner of SW Eagles Parkway and
Sni-A-Bar Boulevard (Barr Road). The
passage of the February 4, 2014 bond issue is not needed to fund the construction
of the transportation center, but bidding this work with the next phase of high
school construction will save the district money, and moving the transportation
operation now makes room for the next phases of construction at the high school.
The work to transform our high school campus to meet our
students’ needs into the future is going to take many phases over multiple
years. We want to continue the work of
our long-range plan to have the classrooms and other facilities needed to meet
the demand of a growing school district.
I ask for your support of this next phase of construction
with your vote on Tuesday, February 4, 2014.
The passage of this bond issue will allow us to take this essential next
step forward.
Thank you!
Blessings,
Dr. Roy Moss
