Blue Valley School District patrons will soon have an opportunity to vote on a new $251 million bond issue, nearly three years after overwhelmingly approving the last such measure to fund facilities improvements and upgrades.

• The centerpiece of the work that would be funded with the bond issue would be a brand-new middle school to serve the district’s growing southwest corner.
• The district says patrons would not see a property tax rate increase with the bond issue, though more exact details — including a more exact list of proposed bond projects — will be rolled out in coming days.

Driving the news: On Monday, the Blue Valley School Board approved a resolution paving the way for the district to hold a January 2023 mail-in ballot election for a proposed $251 million bond issue, which does not include a tax increase for Blue Valley residents.

• Between now and the end of the election on Tuesday, Jan. 31, Blue Valley officials say they will work to communicate the district’s plan that entails meeting with each school in the district to present both faculty and parents with an overview of what work would be done through the latest bond referendum.

New middle school: If approved, Blue Valley plans to use a large portion of the bonds to fund the construction of a roughly $70 million middle school in the southwest area of the district.

• The new middle school would help lower the student population at Aubrey Bend Middle near 175th Street and Quivira Road, which is projected to exceed capacity within the next five years, Blue Valley Deputy Superintendent Kyle Hayden told the board Monday.
• “Eight hundred and fifty students are in that middle school. It is significantly more than any other middle school, like 250 students more,” Hayden said.

Other projects: In addition to funding a new middle school, the bonds would go towards funding facility improvements at other schools, including safety and security systems and updating technology within the district.

• “The average age of our facilities is 29 years old, and the life span of a lot of HVAC equipment, roofs is around 2o-25 years max, and those alone are significant costs,” Hayden said.
• Another $30 million is projected to go towards replacing technology devices throughout the schools.
• A full list of projects expected to be funded by the bonds is anticipated to be released by the district later this week.

Key quote: “Having these different bonds is significant because without those funds, you’re draining from your other resources which are already pretty much tapped out,” Hayden said. “Our capital outlay, we’re using that to basically just maintain what we have and not really fund huge projects.”

What follows after the Blue Valley bond election?

If approved by Blue Valley voters in January, the district will begin working to sell the first portion of the bonds in May 2023.

• “Every expenditure will still come through this board, so the board would have to approve the contract for the middle school. Whatever it was, the money would have to be approved through the board,” Blue Valley Superintendent Tonya Merrigan said.
• Hopefully, projects funded by the 2023 bonds would begin in the summer of 2024, with construction of each project expected to be completed by 2026, Hayden said.