Lakeside seeks millage increase
Lakeside School District will seek voter approval of a 4-mill increase on May 22 to fund proposed building projects to accommodate growth and continue to increase the safety of its learning environment, Superintendent Shawn Cook said this week.
The proposed millage increase — titled “Kids First” — will be on the May 22 annual school election ballot, which is being held this year at the same time as the preferential primary and nonpartisan general election. If approved, Lakeside’s millage rate
of 37.70 and would increase to
41.70, making it the third-highest among the county’s seven public school districts.
“This isn’t a special election,” Cook said. “We’re doing it right in the primary which I think will be a good deal. We know we’ll have larger voter turnout anyway for that time.”
According to an informational packet created by a special committee, which is accessible to voters on the school district’s website, the additional cost would be $80 per year, based on a $100,000 home.
“We break down for everybody how much this will cost them based on a $100,000 home a year,” Cook said.
The packet said Lakeside has seen continued growth by “over
1,000 students since 2004,” and the proposal is intended “to keep up with the growth and keep our kids out of portable buildings.
“We try to look at the growth we’ve had and predict our future growth based on that,” Cook said. “We’re growing. There’s some years we’re growing as much as 100 kids, but probably an average closer in the 70s a year. I don’t see that slowing down. It hasn’t since I’ve been here. It seems like it’s been steady at it.
“Since I got here in 2004, we’ve grown right at 1,000 kids and we feel like that growth will continue. To accommodate that growth, we are wanting to add a new junior high school and the new junior high school will be about the same size as our present middle school.”
The junior high will be a two-story building located at the west end of the high school at the site of a current practice field.
“We have very limited land,” Cook said. “So we thought we need to start building two-story buildings. We’d pull the eighth grade out of the high school and the seventh grade out of the middle school, and we’re pulling the eighth grade out of the high school because we need that room for growth for all the buildings.”
With the junior high approximately the same size as the current middle school, Cook said the middle school, high school and junior high school will all be able to “grow at about the same rate.”
“They would all be full at the same time is what we’re thinking,” he said. “So it would give the middle school some growth potential and also the high school. Our hope is that we would get about seven years of growth from the time we have it built.”
Moving seventh grade will free up about 10 classrooms in the current middle school, he said, for fifth and sixth grades to grow. In the years since eighth grade has been a part of the high school, Cook said the school has “not had any big issues or anything but our parents are just concerned about that, too.”
“I think that’s a side benefit pulling them out that our parents really like because it is I guess a pretty big age difference in one building,” he said. “It’s worked fine, but I understand their concern.
“The other thing that it does for us is it puts our kids up there where they can also use the gymnasium because it’s just right across the road, the junior high gym. And also our fine arts facility, so the band kids will have really good access from the junior high. That kind of puts your two groups that use those facilities the most right there.”
Improvements to the current primary and intermediate buildings are also a part of the proposal, Cook said, which include larger cafeterias to accommodate more students, new principals’ offices with larger waiting areas for parents or visitors to the buildings, and safety entrances.
“We’re going to be studying different schools and safety features and we’re going to have some really good safety features,” he said of the new entrances. “We’re looking at things like shatterproof glass, magnetic locking systems, push buttons … we don’t know which of those we’re going to use yet, but we’re going to study them and get the best one. That’s going to be a part of the primary and intermediate school entrances.”
The cafeteria at the primary school will increase from
190 seats to 340 seats, and the kitchen will “come out into the present cafeteria with a new kitchen and serving lines.”
The intermediate school entrance will stay where it is, but the current cafeteria will be converted into four classrooms and the kitchen area would become principals’ offices, Cook said.
“It will be able to seat 509 kids, the one we have now seats
295,” he said of the intermediate cafeteria. “We’re really reaching capacity at both (cafeterias) and if we can’t build, then our other options would be to start lunch before or after (current lunchtimes). Primary said they probably wouldn’t start one before, but they would have theirs after. But then the intermediate said they’d have to do before and after. So we would be eating as early as 10:30 a.m. and then the last lunch would probably end at 1:45 p.m. for the intermediate, and we really don’t want to do that.”
He said they explored other options such as feeding the students in their classrooms, but “that’s not ideal either. You try to do whatever you have to do.”
A proposed performing arts center would connect the current fine arts building to the high school, Cook said.
“What a lot of our people are excited about in the fine arts community is a new auditorium,” he said. “Our current auditorium was built in 1968. I don’t know the exact enrollment back in 1968 … but it was a lot smaller here then. It will seat 479, the new auditorium will seat 1,200, and it will also have great support spaces for the musicals, for dramas, for dressing rooms and stuff like that backstage.”
The performing arts center will connect the two buildings with a glass hallway that serves as “a lobby for the auditorium, but it will also be a hallway that joins the two buildings.”
The road between the two buildings which travels in front of the courtyard will no longer be open to through traffic. A single lane road, he said, will remain for access to the backstage area of the new performing arts center.
The school’s current auditorium will still be used for other purposes such as drama rehearsals and smaller events.
Because the new junior high will be constructed on a needed practice field, Cook said a new turf practice field will connect to the back of the primary and intermediate playgrounds to provide kindergarten through fourth grade students a safe, level area to play, and provide needed practice space conveniently located for the junior high and high schools.
“A group that’s really excited about it is our band,” he said. “Right now when we have JV (football) games on Monday nights, the band has to wait until the JV game is over to practice. They can just go ahead and practice on this (field).
“It will have a lot of advantages, all of our groups can use it. It’ll have lights on it as well so we can have different things there. We don’t see having a lot of competition-type things there, but we could because of the road, the field will be dug down more level with the playground, so the road will be up higher. We’ll put a railing there and people can bring lawn chairs or we could put portable bleachers when we do have something. That will be a good area to view it from when it’s set up.”
Turf will be added to an area of the middle school playground with a lot of activity and 268 parking spaces will be added to the west end of campus near the new junior high and current primary schools.
“The main (benefit) is that we want to keep our kids in a safe environment, so I say not being in portables, being in nice buildings, having better security in the buildings, and having kids in buildings closer to their age,” he said. “I feel really good about that and I love us being on one campus where we can kind of maximize everything.”
Cook said he appreciates alumni support of the district adding “it’s just neat to be in a place where you’ve got people that just help so much and we have a lot of good people here.
“We know this (proposed millage) is going to be a challenge, but we feel like it’s the best thing for our kids. That’s why we call it ‘Kids First.’”