BLAINE, Minn. – (Sept. 29, 2017) – Voters in the Anoka-Hennepin School District will head to the polls in November to decide if they want to invest millions of dollars into the state’s largest district. A task force organized by the district worked to determine the future space and educational needs of the district and returned to the school board with nine recommendations.
“Key themes were space, adequate space for our growing communities. Safety and security addressing facilities like…our portables across our system,” said superintendent David Law.
When is comes to class sizes the district knows that it is pushing the upper limits for high school students.
“We’ve got some spots in our high schools where we are the highest class size in the metro,” said Law. After reviewing the recommendations from the task force the school board decided to go to the voters.
Anoka-Hennepin voters will see two different questions when they look at their ballot.
- Ballot Question 1: Will provide an additional $9.5 million per year for 10 years. This money will be used to staff and operate the new spaces the district want to build.
- Ballot Question 2: This is a bond referendum that would provide the district with $249 million for construction of 2 new elementary schools and several improvements, additions and maintenance projects at schools all across the district.
If successful the district would use part of the bond referendum to construct two new elementary schools in areas where they are seeing the largest population increase.
“The areas where we see the highest growth…are northeast Blaine and northern Ramsey. The nearest elementary schools are already at capacity,” said Law.
It was not too many years ago that the Anoka-Hennepin School Board made a decision to close or re-purpose several schools. However, those schools were not near the new growth.
“When the board chose to re-purpose those sites they where in parts of our community where we couldn’t sustain a viable elementary school. We don’t have empty buildings waiting for students.” said Law.
The district has held several community meetings for voters to get more information about the ballot questions. The response from residents has followed a couple of common threads.
“The common theme is that education is important. People have been very supportive of the fact that we are going to go after the portables and safety,” said Law.
The question for most voters is, what is this going to cost. The board attempted to listen to their residents when setting the amount for the ballot questions.
“The community said they were willing to invest between $10 and $15 on the average household. Our board went to the low end of that at $11 both the operating levy and the bond would be covered at $11 per month,” said Law.
The decision on the future of district facilities is only a few weeks away as voters will head to the polls on November 7.
