Vote Yes: Secondary School Plan is Not a Surprise

In my earlier post I discussed the . As a member of the Long-Range Facilities Task Force I can tell you the district has also been extremely conservative when it comes to its school buildings.

As a Facilities Task Force member I gained a solid knowledge base and insights into the complexity of our school facility issues for a growing, multi-school district our size.

The has a history of using every bit of space and adding on to schools before taking the next step to construct a new school. Some could argue to a fault. Every Hudson school building, except , has been added on to at least once and often our schools have had multiple additions.

River Crest was built “addition ready” by design.

The Task Force: Consensus on a plan

The Facilities Task Force was made up of 23 members, including board, administration, teaching staff, parents and members. All 23 members came in with ideas on how best to solve Hudson’s growing student population. After reviewing close to 40 options, including non-build and add-on options, the Facilities Task Force reached consensus on a recommendation to the Board of Education in December 2004. There was only one member who opposed the recommendation and he joined the Task Force with the firm commitment to not support any option unless it was an add-on option.

The Facilities Task Force recommendation included:

• Construct a K-5 elementary school with a 588 student capacity
• Construct a new high school for grades 10-12
• Convert the existing high school into a grades 8-9 school
• Convert the existing middle school into a grades 6-7 school. 

This recommendation, then and now, fully utilizes existing space and allows room for the district offices to move back into the current high school. This would allow the district to sell the office building out on Brakke Drive.

River Crest: On Time and Under Budget

As part of this recommendation, the board decided to construct a K-5 elementary first. In 2008, River Crest Elementary opened – on time and under budget. In fact the school was well below the cost of other elementary schools built at this same time; 29 percent below the average cost of elementary schools built in Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

A great cost savings for a “green” school that has yearly operating costs savings for electric and water.

Recession Realities

After River Crest opened it was time for the board to start on the secondary space portion of the Facilities Task Force recommendation. As we all know the nation went into an economic recession and it wasn’t prudent for the board to ask taxpayers to support the construction of a new school. Moving forward needed to be put on hold until the economy could recover. As a short-term fix, the board took advantage of federal stimulus dollars and added much-needed cafeteria space to the middle school, gym space, and an orchestra classroom (previously orchestra had been meeting in the cafeteria).

The path to the track

In 2010, when the economy was starting its slow recovery the board once again picked up the charge to solve long-term space needs for secondary students. The obvious choice for a school site was the district owned UU property. For reasons I’ve already stated, this site was not suitable for a large secondary school due to the waste water treatment plant that would need to be constructed on site. Once this information was determined the board began looking for available properties within the .

In the fall of 2011, the board was able to negotiate a purchase price for the St. Croix Meadows dog track that was reasonable; a site community members have often suggested should be used as a school. Even the task force had approached the owner to see if this would be a possibility. At the time he flat-out refused – hoping to no end that it would still become a casino.

Voting Yes on April 3

So here we are today, with a referendum scheduled for April 3 to purchase a building that has sat empty for 10 years and not had a single buyer this whole time even when the economy was booming.

We have the opportunity to take this community eyesore, which created division among many people in this community when it was built, and turn it into a center of community pride.

It isn’t even thinking outside of the box to look at what other community facility needs there are and see if partnerships can be made and use this community asset to its fullest. I remember talk on the Facilities Task Force about locating other city functions in our school buildings, and ideas like openning our school cafeterias to senior citizens, allowing community members to use our art facilities, and certainly providing more athletic space are all positives. 

The St. Croix Meadows site offers us this flexibility. Adding on to the high school or middle school would not provide us the space for this kind of future-focused planning. 

Hudson can do so much better than Quonset hut classrooms where practice fields once were. As I remember, the task force talked about those, too!

Let’s plan with vision not just a “good enough” attitude. Isn’t that the kind of plan you really want? A plan that leads to things that make people want to move here?

Vote yes April 3 for a responsible short-term solution with great potential for so much more.

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For more information on the referendum, go to VoteYesHudson.com. There you will find lots of background information. The Vote Yes Hudson Schools Committee is a mix of parents who have children in all levels of school grades in the district, and a few citizens who have "no skin in the game" but believe that strong schools equal a strong community.