GRANADA- On Wednesday morning the Granada Huntley East Chain (GHEC) School Board unanimously approved two ballot measures concerning funding for a $1.9 million school expansion.

The add-on would include two new elementary classrooms, a kitchen expansion and a new agriculture shop.

GHEC superintendent Doug Storbeck says the addition ensures the district is able to meet the needs of an expanding student body.

“Ultimately our goal is not necessarily to grow a whole lot. We still want to stay a one section school, but we do want to have a capacity to have some flexibility as far as our class sizes,” said Storbeck.

A major focus of the expansion is ensuring GHEC’s facilities can adequately meet the needs of its student body.

Recently the district has seen elementary class sizes increase prompting concerns about overextending teachers. Earlier this month the board placed open enrollment ceilings on some elementary grades. One proposal for the classrooms included in the expansion would allow the school to move students in over-capacity elementary classes into a smaller multi-grade class.

“Ultimately the parents of the child would have to be in agreement that this is what they’d like to do. We’re not going to force somebody into doing this, but that is what is going to allow us to host the upper 20s, maybe into the 30s of a grade level,” said Storbeck.

A larger student body also prompts the kitchen expansion.

“Approximately six years ago our student body was (in the) lower 200s. We’re now consistently serving over 300 students on a daily basis. We’re really tight right now (making) it work and it’s not necessarily the best facility to serve the population we currently have,” said Storbeck.

The final item within the expansion is a new workshop for the district’s agriculture program. At GHEC the agriculture program recently merged with its industrial technology program, and the workshop would likely be used for a variety of different courses and projects.

“We’ve spent a lot of time and resources over the last three years building our ag program, and we’d like to continue to expand that,” said Storbeck.

The workshop would allow instructors to bring otherwise inaccessible items –such as livestock or vehicles– into a learning environment.

Storbeck also hopes expanding GHEC’s agriculture program incentivizes students to remain in the area after graduation.

“Ultimately we want our students to move back to the area. I think that’s always the goal; to build and educate your own, bring them back, and have them continue to support our local economy and be the next set of leaders in the area,” said Storbeck.

The district plans to move ahead with the expansion regardless of whether or not the ballot measures pass. The measures would allow the school board to implement an alternative funding scheme in which most of the project’s costs would be paid for by the state.

If the ballot measures fail the district would have to pay for the expansion using its existing levy. If the first ballot measures succeeds it would allow the district to issue building bonds to cover the cost of the project. These bonds would be eligible for the state’s Ag2school tax credit which would cover roughly 55 percent of construction costs.

The second ballot measure is contingent on the first passing. It would revoke the district’s current operating levy of roughly $2,908 per pupil and replace it with a levy of 2,700 per pupil, a reduction of roughly 7 percent. This reduced levy would begin to apply to taxes payable in 2024 and would remain in place for 10 years. The reduction would be possible because the Ag2school tax credit would supplant the income the district would receive from its original levy.

Because the building bond and the reduced levy derive revenue from property taxes, state statute requires each question to be accompanied by a boldface notice announcing voters are authorizing a property tax increase. However, property taxes would remain the same if the first measure passes and decrease if both measures succeed.