A Few More Days Left for Residents in Sauk Rapids Rice School District to Complete Community Input Survey

(KNSI) — Sauk Rapids-Rice School District residents have just a few more days to complete a community survey so the Board of Education can gather feedback on two proposed projects.

In 2018, the school board did a series of 22 meetings around the district and gathered feedback on what the community thought about the needs for district buildings and facilities. Through that process, several items surfaced in terms of priorities, and many of them, including Pleasantview Elementary, Mississippi Heights, safe and secure entrances and exits, and bettering the pickup and drop off areas, have been completed. That was six years ago, so the board decided it was time to ask about priorities again, if they’re still the same, and where the community is at in terms of finishing off the list.

One way to take the temperature is to do random sampling, but according to Superintendent Brad Bergstrom, the board decided strongly that they wanted to hear from anybody and everybody in the district, so random sampling was scrapped. Instead, on July 12th, they sent out 11,164 electronic surveys to every address in the district.

The survey “is not a referendum for ‘do the people want this or that’,” according to Bergstrom. It asks about the energy and desire in the community to look at two projects.

One of them is an early childhood center at Hillside Early Learning Center. Bergstrom explains, “the building is almost 100 years old, we’ve got a steam boiler that’s still in there, we can only use part of the building. The second floor we can’t use due to air quality and elevator issues, and it’s a building that is an important part of the history of our community, but it was designed as a high school, it was not designed as an as an early childhood center. So is this something that the community would be interested in?”

Bergstrom says a few years ago, there were two early childhood programs with about 160 students. Some programming changes were made, and childcare was also offered for three and four-year-olds if they go to preschool at Sauk Rapids-Rice. Last year, that number was 240. “So we had a significant increase in our enrollment. Right now, I think we’re over 190 that are registered for this coming year, which is well ahead of where we were last year in terms of numbers. And what we’re seeing is that there’s a huge need for childcare and our space that we have limits us and we’re already at the capacity for for the childcare piece, which is a huge need for our community. So we anticipate that there may be some needs at the early childhood level. Hence the reason why we’re looking at the possibility of an early childhood building to meet those enrollment needs. And part of that enrollment need is the childcare piece.”

The other is the outdoor activities project, which is the second phase of building the high school. The land sits at the middle school that was once the old high school. “There are drainage issues, and there is a lot of work that has to be done to that. Do we want to put it in the space where it’s currently at, or is there energy to move over and do what we originally planned as part of phase two?” said Bergstrom.

He explained there’s an opportunity to do it now as the “new” high school was built in 2003, and the bond for it will be paid off in December 2025. “There is a chance to do one or both of these projects with a tax impact that would be relatively small, depending on whether we did one or both of them. If we did one of them, there would be no tax impact; if we did both of them, there would be a small tax impact, which is all laid out in the survey for people to know and understand.”

The deadline for returning the survey is August 5th. It can be filled out and returned electronically by that day or filled out on paper and mailed in, but it must be postmarked by August 5th. Completed paper copies can also be dropped off by August 5th at Rice City Hall or the Community Education Office at the middle school in Sauk Rapids.

School Perceptions will gather and analyze the data and share it at the August 20th school board meeting. From there, the next step would be community meetings, so if people are interested in hearing more about the survey or didn’t get a chance to hear or watch the board meeting, the information will be shared that way. Follow-up with the community will also be done so they can ask questions.

There is no deadline for when any changes would be implemented or projects started. Bergstrom says, “if the community says yes, they would like the board to consider moving forward, then we’ll establish that timeline, when might there be an election, and there’s some state guidelines that you have to follow. You have to do a comment review, and if you’re going to do a vote, you have to make sure the community is aware of it and those things. But that’s yet to be determined, because we don’t want to get ahead of our skis on this.”

If the majority of the community says no, he says, “then the answer is no and then we’ll move on and look to do something different here.” If the answer is yes, “Then we’ll take those next steps in terms of what that’s going to look like. We’ve been very clear and methodical in this process, and we’re not going to get too far ahead of ourselves. Let’s get this survey, let’s review the results, let’s do some community meetings and then from there the board can decide what those next steps might be.”

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