Stanton ponders school improvements

The Stanton School District is continuing to look at options for making necessary improvements.
At the July 9 meeting, the Stanton School Board heard comments from Kassie Houdek and Jenna Ramsey, members of the district’s Strategic Planning committee. The district had a facility study done two years ago. which got the ball rolling on projects. Houdek said the district was facing numerous challenges in its own halls.
“The heating and cooling systems need additional updates. We have classrooms that are outdated. Additional space is a need and a concern, as well as safety upgrades that are overdue that include the data intercom, fire alarm, and other systems that need those updates. Of course facilities are aging and there are some renovation needs to meet ADA compliance. There’s some necessary upgrades that can be done there too. These are not just inconveniences, we see them as barriers to learning,” explained Houdek.
While there is much to be done, Houdek said there is a lot the district should be pleased about.
“The STEM room and then the science room that you guys have upgraded are absolutely phenomenal, along with the HVAC improvements that are going on in the elementary right now. There’s new carpet, lighting, and then it sounds like the school is getting the locker rooms painted, so that’s really exciting,” commented Houdek.
After the facility study was completed in 2023, Houdek said the district had completed 25% of the top two projects projects noted as of this year, those being HVAC/mechanical upgrades and electrical upgrades, and another 45% of those HVAC, mechanical, and electrical projects could be completed if the district were to proceed with a bond issue. Other work is needed.
“Other main concerns include more HVAC, mechanical, electrical, and then building, exterior, interior. That also includes work to the roof, tuck pointing, parking lots. A survey went out to the community online based off of the facility study, asking that they prioritize most important to least important,” advised Houdek. “The heating and cooling system replacement was listed as the most important issue to survery respondents. Number two came in as additional classroom space. Three was the data intercom and fire alarm updates. Four was the administrative offices and main entry updates to improve safety and security. And then number five was air conditioning of the high school gym.”
Houdek said during an in-person meeting in February, respondents had similar priorities. The top need highlighted was administrative offices and main entry to improve security, heating and cooling upgrades, additional classroom space, fire alarm and electrical upgrades, restroom accessibility upgrades, and then the in-person respondents noted air conditioning of the high school gym as the sixth highest priority. Houdek said both groups felt security of the building was a key issue. Houdek then told the board that the strategic planning commission was recommending the district go out for bond issues.
“This would cover the rest of that heating and cooling replacement, additional classroom space, upgrading and implementing a data intercom and fire alarm systems and updates, as well as renovations of the administrative offices and main entry updated to improve safety, and air conditioning of the high school gym, and restroom and restroom accessibility updates. The first vote bond would be the $2.70 and would give us $3.515 million. That second vote would add $1.35, and that would allow us an additional $5.285 million for funding,” Houdek explained.
Stanton superintendent David Gute that the district would be looking at a 20-year bond. 
“As evaluations go up, you can maybe come back in five more years and do some more bonding. But also, remember, in 2027, we’ll have the elevator and the ball field lights paid off so there’s some more money available for projects or improvements or whatever else may come up. But this would, I’m going to say for at least a five-year period, we’ll probably maxed out as far as doing anything with a bond.
Big picture, it’s a draft right now, it’s not a final. If we keep hearing from the community that we need to have even more classrooms or whatever, we’re still having conversations, we’re not voting on the layout,” Gute commented.
Houdek said they did a poll of area schools and those of a similar size including East Mills, Fremont Mills, Essex, Sidney, Griswold, Lenox, Corning, Red Oak, and Hamburg and  South Page on the end. South Page and Stanton are currently the only two districts that don’t have bond issues. If both bonds were approved, Stanton would be at the highest of the district levies with its bonding amount. Gute said Stanton was limited on its bonding capacity.
“Our district is land small. As opposed to some of these other districts, they have a larger area of land so they’re able to bond for more. When we look at East Mills, that’s a very large district geographically as opposed to us where we’re tiny. We want to make sure whatever decisions are being made that we educate the community members and teachers on that aspect as well. The school bills at East Mills spread over more acres. So it’s a less tax burden or it’s a smaller tax burden as opposed to our district. If you would do a bond at $4.05, it’s going on a smaller amount of land value,” advised Gute.
There was agreement that the district will have to educate a lot if the proposal did go forward, on what was needed in the building. Houdek spoke about the need to proceed.
“We’ve done the math and prioritized needs, and unfortunately everything does cost a lot of money. It was disheartening at first because we could potentially have $3 million and $5 million. And then when you start putting pen to paper and getting actual cost of stuff, it’s insane. As it stands, $5 million, is only going towards those top five or six needs. But it’s just unfortunately just a reality,” said Houdek. “Most Southwest Iowa schools have passed bonds and are paying on them. So it’s not just about the buildings, but believing in our kids and then having that safe, efficient, productive learning environment for our children to grow and succeed in.”
The first bond issue at roughly $3.5 million would pay for the renovation floor plan and fire system and intercom upgrades. The additional $5.2 million plus would be used to pay for gym upgrades, finishing the elementary, HVAC upgrades, ADA compliance.
“There may be more, but we don’t have solid numbers on that on the second part just yet. We’re hoping that they won’t be as much as some of those estimates on there and they would sprinkle in a few more things. I know the ag classroom is down there a little further, but if we go through that proposed plan and we do move the administrative offices, there is a corner classroom that will be ag. And since there’s water running there, they can actually have running water in and actually do more lab exercises and hydroponics and stuff that they’ve been asking for and wanting,” stated Houdek.
Houdek made it clear to the board that the committee is not proposing anything big or fancy.
“If someone asked us or if someone asked the board, ‘what did they propose or what was it?’ Basically, we took the top things of the facilities assessment that was done, and we took the top things of the in-person meeting that was done. We took the top things from the online survey that was done. It’s what everybody wanted. So that’s an easy way to explain it,” commented Houdek.
Gute said the next step is to get to work with the attorneys and with KPE Architecture on language for a petition.
“Once we work through that process, I’ll need to bring it back to the board. Officially, you don’t have to have board approval on it, but it’s best practice to do that. And we have to write it with flexibility in case some of those things come up that, you know, we start digging and there’s a $100,000 something down there that we didn’t realize was down there. We’ll have to have two petitions if we’re going to go after two bond votes. We also have discussed the possibility of having another a community meeting to go over the latest progress,” said Gute.
Board President John McDonald said he had concerns about bonding and basically consuming the district’s bonding capacity for some years in the future.
“What if we’re successful and enrollment goes up even more and we need more classrooms? Well, we’ve used up our bonding capacity. If we went through the first bond, is there a way to get numbers if we were to extend an addition for two or three more classrooms? Could we do the secured entrance, but then taking that second vote, bond to have more classrooms? My first concern is in three and a half million dollars, I think we could surely get more than one classroom,” McDonald advised. “I don’t even think we necessarily need to go to a two vote bond to get more than one classroom. It seems like renovating all these offices, we’re talking about knocking out walls and very expensive things, to turn offices into classrooms and to turn some classrooms into offices slash conference rooms and stuff. It seems pretty expensive for getting one more classroom and getting a secure entrance. We’re getting a lot of renovated space, which is nice, but, I don’t even think we’d have to go to a second bond to get more than one classroom.”
McDonald said he felt the Stanton community might be thinking of the same thing, He also felt the district needed to maintain some bond capacity for what could happen in the next five years.
Gute commented it was hard to predict if Stanton’s enrollment would keep increasing.
“We’ve had a great run for about six or seven years. Do I hope that the next six or seven does the same thing? Yes. Can I sit here and tell you that’s going to happen? No. As far as this first bond, that doesn’t include the A/C in the gym, or the other upgrades that need to be done. I think a lot of public might wonder why we’re not doing these other things as well,” said Gute.
The board agreed to begin the petitions for the bond issue votes, to be reviewed at a future meeting with all board members present. The language would have to be approved at the August meeting.