The Nest Podcast

Community Update On One Campus Vision

Stevie Holdinghausen
SPEAKER_00:

Hi, I'm David Hog, Superintendent of the Jeff Star 7th School District, here with an update on the One Campus Vision. But first, really want to wish our families a great holiday season for Christmas and the new year. Hope you really spend that time with families and friends as we near that time. We've had a great first semester. It's really hard to believe. It's been about a year since our team started to look at the one campus vision. We rolled it out in last January. And the one thing that's been on my mind throughout this process is what Glenn Keepe always said is this community doesn't like surprises. That actually fits my nature very well. I know we've put a lot of information out there. You've kind of seen us kind of tweak it along the way. Right now, the core of the plan is still in place for the future. So if you go to our webpage and see those videos, those are all still relevant. But it is time. And I think it is time to really, for this district, to look at putting the first phase of this in place. So I encourage you to either attend or go online and watch our board meeting next week, or and it can be on demand later to really start looking at. We will make a decision in January January whether we moved forward with a bond opportunity on this process. And I think there's some great opportunity for this district. But I really believe in keeping our community informed to the best of our ability with everything that we have that's relevant and also current at that time. Just a quick update on the project. Again, I want to stress the stuff you're seeing in the core is all the same. That concept has not changed. There are some tweaks as we got our road study back to maybe some lanes and different things could make it more efficient. But the core of it is very much in place. We're still waiting on that to go to Modot to come back where we could actually share the plan and what the actual layout. Next week, I'll give an update of some concepts with that, but we just don't have a visual plan we can hand you. We can talk about what's in that road study uh next week. At least we're still in the process of finalizing the road study, but we can talk about the kind of what the first findings were. And secondly, as far as the project itself, and I'm talking about the entire possibility for a bond opportunity, there's three phases we're looking at: safer roads, a safer campus, and also safer events and facilities. The safer roads as far as the funding for the project, um, I think there's some exciting opportunities for us. I think number one, we've learned that we can do a 50-50 cost share for any changes on US 61. Even further with the plan we've put out there, and our road study crew Trek has been awesome to advise us on this, but we may be eligible for a larger grant through the East-West Gateway Cleaner Air Opportunity, which we will be making application for if we get to that point of being able to start the project. And then lastly, we've really studied the use of our own material on the hillside. The entire 60 acres, that is off the table as far as site leveling the entire area. But we can site prep an area for a future school. At this point, I'm ready to tell you that's where the elementary school, in my opinion, needs to go down the road. But use that material to build our road and create some other site-leveled opportunities in our district for future growth. We save so much money by using our own material. It's going to greatly benefit the district if that plan is enacted. The second part, the safer campus, has really caught my attention. And Mr. Schaefer is going to present at the board meeting. And then we will also have that information as we get moved through if we decide to move forward with the bond opportunity. But I used to think in terms of security systems being kind of independent, you had your lock system, you had your camera system. All that can be bundled into one with some huge AI opportunity for us to make this a really safe and uh effective process for us to keep our kids as safe as we possibly can. That I am really exciting at excited at looking at. And I know there's some great information there that I think our community needs to consider through this process. And then lastly, we're still on target for the new baseball softball facility to go down below the PAC as part of our one campus planning. Um, we actually had kids, we had some staff members and some students go on a trip this week to look at three different facilities. The students are going to give an update to the board meeting next week, which is always awesome and some unique opportunity for them. They were great this week. Um so we'll have that updated for you, looking at the baseball, softball facility, um, the addition at the football field to get everybody in with the addition of the upgrade of the press box, but more importantly, the concession and bathroom so we don't have any foot traffic during the games. And then also creating an opportunity to upgrade the playground at Danby Middle School. You can stay connected through our link with the One Campus Vision. I have such a wonderful team that's put information out there. We will be moving forward with this process. Again, the big takeaway from this is have a great holiday season, number one. And number two, please tune in next week. Our intent is to keep you informed as much as possible with no surprises. And at any point, if you have a question for us, please do not hesitate to reach out. Thank you.