District 11 Creating Task Force to Address Facility Needs

February 14, 2016 anoka hennepin school district, chief technology officer, city of coon rapids, Coon Rapids, CTN, CTN Coon Rapids, CTN Studios, district 11

ANOKA, Minn. — This school year, the Anoka-Hennepin school district saw enrollment increase for the first time in more than a decade. That increase has officials re-evaluating their facility needs.

Chuck Holden, Chief Operations Officer of Anoka-Hennepin School District says, “The needs in 2016 are way different than in 1963, and what will they be in 2026?”

The Anoka-Hennepin school district is growing and so are their facility needs.

After closing and repurposing eight schools in 2010 due to a drop in enrollment, the district is now seeing a spike in students.

“We’re having a lot of growth in the district for the first time in many years. We are up over 300 students this year. It’s a great problem for us. Instead of having excess classrooms, we are struggling to find spaces for students,” says Holden.

With aging facilities, officials want to make area schools more suitable for the ever-changing needs of the 21st century learner. Several of those improvements need to take place here, at Coon Rapids High School.

While portable classrooms, school boundary restructuring and building additions have sustained the needs of schools for the past few years, they are only “Band-Aid” fixes according to Holden.
Now, the school board is seeking community members to serve on a task force that will develop recommendations on facility needs.

“We want to really take a thoughtful look at that and potentially a referendum or bond for bigger projects that fit our district for the next 10-15 years,” says Holden.

Recently, a portion of the biomedical sciences area at Coon Rapids High School underwent renovations, and the result has improved educational opportunities for students.

“We have adequate lab space and storage so that we can have state of the art equipment available for our students to actually learn what professionals in the medical profession use. They actually get to practice in here in high school,” says Leah Sams, Biomedical Program Coordinator at Coon Rapids High School.

But more renovations are needed at the high school to continue to build the program.

“Our rooms that aren’t renovated, we need space and we need to have a flexible learning environment so students can sit at a traditional desk, do their computer or book work, but we also need an area where students can work as a team, have adequate supplies and especially the technology ports,” says Sams.

The task force will be called “fit for the future,” and will meet over the course of eight months. Officials say the earliest any bond question would be put to voters would be in 2017.