The submission of the petition(s) at the June 14 Board of Education will trigger the bond vote being on the September ballot. The Facilities Plan as you see it here is the result of the work of the Facilities Committee last summer and then the conversation with the Board that several of the Committee members were able to attend in the fall. It was decided by the Board after that discussion that including a new elementary in this bond was the "best" path with the bonding capacity presented by Piper-Jaffray. The top portion of the plan would be impacted by the September 2017 vote. The bottom portion is an anticipated bond vote in 2022.
Some anticipated questions:
1. How would passage of the bond impact the CCA tax rate?
Below is history and projection of the CCA tax rate. We anticipate maintaining a relatively constant overall tax rate of $16.94-$16.95 for the foreseeable future. Our Debt Service rate cannot exceed the voter approved rate of $4.05, currently $4.03. If the district maintains the debt service near that maximum level, other levies, could be manipulated in order to maintain the overall rate at current levels.
2. What if the bond fails?
If the bond fails the district will need to bus students from North Bend Elementary and Tiffin Elementary to Clear Creek Elementary and Amana Elementary. North Bend and Tiffin will be over capacity in the very near future, see previous post. The district would need to utilize available classroom space at CCE and AE in order to manage class sizes across the district. Additional bussing would increase General Fund expenditures, which consumes dollars that could otherwise be used for teacher salaries and instructional materials. With funding levels from the State running low, maintaining adequate funds in the General Fund is already a challenge.
3. Will elementary attendance areas be changed with the addition of another elementary in Tiffin?
Not likely. With the anticipated growth in the Tiffin, North Liberty, and Coralville communities maintaining adequate space will continue to be a challenge for CCA. When the new elementary, hopefully, comes online in August 2019 the intention would be for it to be a 4-5 center for Tiffin Elementary and North Bend Elementary. This will allow the district to maintain the current elementary boundaries for K-3 students and fits with the long-range plan of a new, larger high school, conversion of the current high school to a 6-8 middle school, and conversion of the current middle school to a 4-5 center, and elementary schools to a PK-3 configuration.
Please feel free to email me at: timkuehl@ccaschools.org with any questions you have, or post them as a comment on this post.
It's an exciting time for the Clippers!
Tim Kuehl
Superintendent
If the proposal and plan, as you described goes through, please let me know how the scenario works for Amana Elementary and Clear Creek Elementary. If the middle school becomes a 4-5 center for all students, then the AE and CCE 9-10 year olds, either take much longer bus rides (many are riding/waiting for an hour) to get to Tiffin, or AE and CCE 4-5 stay in their locations. If that is the case, those students have a much different experience and much different level of facilities than their North Bend and Tiffin grade 4-5 counterparts. If AE and CCE grades 4-5 are bussed to Tiffin, that counts for about a 33/34% reduction of their elementary school populations. Based on the projections, that means about 185 students left (k-3) at CCE, with a 425 instructional capacity, and about 100 students left (k-3) at AE, with a 340 capacity. How long would we expect one or both to stay open, by redirecting more students from those areas? Second, if you can afford to bus elementary students from Amana and Oxford to Tiffin, why can't you afford to bus elementary students from North Liberty and Tiffin to Amana/Oxford?
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