Dear SV Community:

In March of this year, the Board of School Directors posted plans for looking into possible renovations throughout the district, including the addition of classrooms at the elementary school to alleviate overcrowding. The board wishes to update the community on our efforts after a great deal of research, building tours, and discussions at the committee and board levels.

In-depth discussions with our architects led to building tours of the elementary and middle schools with each building’s administrative team, district administrators, and members of the board’s Buildings and Grounds committee. Further discussions about the scope of work and potential financing of proposed projects were discussed at two committee meetings and three board meetings. Long-term planning included three phases: 1) potential expansion of the elementary school; 2) HVAC and roofing upgrades at the high school and elementary school; and, 3) HVAC and roofing upgrades at the middle school plus the replacement of the stadium artificial turf after it reaches its expected lifespan (9-10 years from now).

 The elementary school tour yielded the realization that classroom space is available to provide an extra classroom for at least four of the five grades in the building. The current seven classrooms per grade could become eight classrooms per grade very quickly, if needed. This finding effectively took expanding the elementary school off the table as the largest grades in the district are either near or are already at the middle school level.

This moved phase 2 up to phase 1, so the board and district administration examined all options for either replacing or upgrading the HVAC systems in the elementary school and high school and repairing the roofing after the completion of the HVAC work. At the most recent joint meeting of the Buildings and Grounds committee and the Budget and Financing committee, the discussion focused on the scope of the work and the ability of the district to finance this extensive work within the parameters of our annual operating budget

The board will continue to work with our architect of record, EI Associates, and our financial management firm, Public Finance Management, to develop phasing for the work and the related financing options. The work will take the district well into the future rather than simply patch systems that have outlived their useful expectancy. The board began discussing these options in depth at our June 15^th Committee of the Whole meeting and took action to move forward at our June 22^nd Regular Board Voting Meeting. The extensive work by our Budget and Finance committee and our Buildings and Grounds committee permitted us to move forward on these renovations without a tax increase.

We hope that this update has been informative and we thank you for your support.

                                                                                                    The SV Board of School Directors