Superintendent's Message for November 2022

As we flip the calendar to November, we have wrapped up our first quarter and our fall sports and activities.  Our Southwest Valley students completed a strong first quarter and our athletes had very successful seasons.  Thank you to our communities for showing up and cheering our students to success on the gridiron, courts, and courses.

The Corning school board will meet on November 21 to finalize details on a proposed bond referendum to repair, renovate, and build new facilities in our district.  A community committee met for six months and shared with the board their priorities for the project.  We will be releasing a community survey for your input and from these two pieces of information the board will formulate a plan to put on a ballot in March of 2023. 

The district ran a bond referendum in 2012, focusing on the high school, adding a gym, renovating classrooms, and installing air conditioning.  This bond was for twenty years and was funded from both general obligation bonds and the one-cent sales tax called SAVE (Secure and Advanced Vision for Education).  Since 2018 we refinanced the bonds and have increased payments to allow for an expected early payoff in 2025.

Since 2018 we have completed the following projects using our SAVE and Physical Plant and Equipment Levy (PPEL) funds: tearing down the old middle school building and building a state-of-the-art greenhouse and maintenance shed.  We have renovated the activity center gym, new roofing at the high school building, and new signage throughout the district.  We are currently renovating the auditorium, installing a new boiler/HVAC at the activity center, and purchasing a new bus.

The Corning board is also seeking bids for replacement poles and lights at the track and football complex.  The current electrical grid and lights are well over 30 years old and have failed multiple times this season.  Activities Director, Allen Naugle, is working on private financing for a new video/scoreboard for the football field that would be a partnership with our school and local businesses.

The time has come to address our facility needs at the elementary school, playground, and ballfields.  The elementary school was built in the 1960s and needs repairs to HVAC, electrical, plumbing, and structurally.  The wooden playground has been a marvelous tradition for many years and has been painted, sanded, and repaired several times, but it continues to deteriorate and needs to be replaced.  The ballfields need new fencing and press boxes and the track and football field complex needs a new concession stand and restrooms.  We have also listed a new bus barn that would be built outside the flood zone. 

Why now when inflation is high?  The answer is that we are in an arms race with every school around our district.  With open enrollment wide open and families able to pick and choose where they want to send their children, we need to have the safest and best facilities for our districts. Villisca faced this challenge in 2019 and passed a bond referendum to update its facilities to provide the best facilities for the children of our district. 

As we begin the process again to become one district by July 1, 2025, we need to ensure our facilities are safe and provide the best learning environment for our children and families.  This bond referendum isn’t for items we don’t need, it is for facilities we need, and you, as a stakeholder, should want in our district facilities.  Once we have the information back from the survey, we will meet and decide on the final projects.  We will plan several meetings so you can ask questions about the proposal before the vote in March 2023.  The school's portion on your taxes will be very close to what it has been over the course of the last ten years.  We will continue to provide more information through meetings, mailers, and our Facebook page.  We ask for your support to ensure Southwest Valley Schools can stay vibrant and stable well into the future.  It is a great day to be a Timberwolf!