how we reached this point

The Granada Huntley East Chain School District serves the communities of Granada, Huntley, East Chain, as well as students from surrounding communities. As a united district, we are proud of our small community school, where we strive to be a place where everyone matters.

We are grateful for our communities’ support on a two-question referendum that was approved in November 2015—a building bond referendum and an operating levy. The building bond allowed our district to focus on a single facility in Granada, where operating two buildings was inefficient and costly. District residents were presented with a two-question referendum in November 2022 to build two new classrooms, an upgraded kitchen, and an agriculture shop and replace and reduce our operating levy. The building bond referendum failed by only 19 votes and, although the operating levy passed, it was contingent on the successful passage of Question One, which means it did not pass. 

Since that time, we gathered feedback from our community as our facility and educational needs remain unaddressed. It’s important that we provide adequate space and educational programs for our teachers to educate and students to learn and grow. The school board wants to provide another opportunity for residents to consider investing in these improvements.

Since fall 2023, our district has gone through a comprehensive long-range planning process to ensure all facility and educational needs were identified, discussed, prioritized, and fiscally addressed. Our district completed the following milestones throughout the process:

  • We created a Facilities Committee to lead this process to help further understand, identify, and prioritize our facility needs. This committee included board members Ross Gronewald, Ken Madsen, and Brad Mattson. This committee presented their findings to the school board for consideration throughout the process.

  • We held two community meetings to provide updates to our residents and gather feedback.

  • We gathered feedback from internal and external stakeholders throughout the process, including an online staff survey in December 2023. Although not originally in the proposed plan, residents provided important feedback that improvements to our Career and Technical Education (CTE) areas are important.

  • We completed a comprehensive facility assessment to understand the physical needs of our school, including our building systems (HVAC, electrical, plumbing, etc.), building envelope and exterior (windows, doors, roofing, etc.,) and interior finishes (flooring, cabinets, doors and hardware, etc.).

  • We completed a third-party demographics study to understand our historical and projected enrollment trends.

  • We completed a capacity and space analysis to understand how utilized our spaces are during the day.

  • We completed an educational adequacy study to understand how our educational spaces compare to the standards set by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE). 

  • We completed a utility analysis to measure the amount of energy our buildings are using and compare those levels to similar buildings and past consumption, and understand if there are opportunities to reduce energy and save dollars.

  • We brought in ICS, an experienced K-12 planning and construction management firm, OPN Architects, an experiencesK-12 architect, and Baird, our district’s experienced financial consultant. This project team has helped our district throughout the long-range planning process.

  • With the help of Baird, we completed a comprehensive financial analysis to review our district’s financial health and identify all available funding options and tools to minimize the impact on local taxpayers.

After all facility needs were prioritized and discussed, they were presented to the school board by the Facilities Committee for further consideration. On Friday, May 23, the school board approved submitting a Review and Comment to the MDE, the formal documentation required for building bond referendums. On Friday, July 18, the school board formally approved a resolution to present voters with two questions on Tuesday, November 4. 

Along with the Facilities Committee, the school board feels confident the proposed plan best positions the district for the future.