The restructuring of the state foundation aid formula for schools during the 2007 Legislature provides school districts such as Williston's with "equity payments." The equity payments provide funds for districts that don't have the property valuation to apply tax levies against to generate adequate funding to meet student’s needs.
The equity payments have allowed the district to enhance its employee salaries in recent years so they are more competitive, said District 1 School Board President Dave Hanson.
Now the district is positioned to tackle another major issue it has faced over the years in upgrading the district's facilities.
"When you start taking a step back and look at our facilities, three of the four elementary schools are 40- to 50-plus years old," Hanson said."With that kind of building and the limited maintenance that we were able to do in the past decade, there are issues associated with that." The facility matter also includes portable classrooms that were put in place during the last oil boom to get the district through a few years until a better plan could be created. But funding changes forced temporary structures to become much more long term.
"We've limped those structures along for a period of 25 years now," Hanson said. "We may have to limp them along for a couple of more years because the main structures are in need for assessment."
New District 1 superintendent Dr. Viola LaFontaine recently had the district's school principals and the director of Head Start create priority lists for existing facilities.
"Once I got that gigantic list, I said there has to be some way to analyze and put these into perspective," LaFontaine said.
She then had the administrators prioritize the needs based upon five key considerations. The needs were examined for safety concerns, interfering or interrupting the learning environment, health concerns, security concerns and is it costing the district more money by leaving it as it is.
The administrators have completed this evaluation and LaFontaine now wants input from the community.
"The people who were on our strategic planning group said we should have a process of determining our facility needs," she said of a focus group that worked on facilities.
LaFontaine wants members of that facility focus group to go over the list of needs that has been created and prioritize them. She then hopes to compare those ratings against those of the administrators.
Hanson said prior to now, the district hasn't had a chance to sit down to conduct a thorough analysis that includes saying here is where it needs to go and here is how it is going to be done.
"It's always been reactive," he said.
LaFontaine, Hanson and the administrators all identify some serious roofing needs in the district. The school board already has begun to address these needs by declaring the Rickard Elementary School roof an emergency matter to get repairs done.
"We need to know what we need to do right away. We also need to know what we need to fix over the next two to three years," LaFontaine said of the facility survey process. "Then we also need to plan on what money we need to set aside or something."
She thinks funding the facility needs is going to be a serious challenge. The district likely can address the roofing needs with the federal stimulus funds it has received.
"As long as we don't have any surprises once we get into those roofs," she added.
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