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One of the things that has been
a very good thing for our district
was partnering with our city
and developing a relationship with our city.
And we thought it made sense because we both serve the same people.
And so we needed to build a new junior high school.
And we needed to relocate it and we didn't have any land. And so the city purchased
some parkland and we purchased a small portion of that
for a new school.
And then we worked an interlocal agreement with the city
on the utilization of the sports fields that were in that park.
So there are soccer fields, a football stadium,
other football fields,
other sports fields that are included in that park.
We have an agreement to be able to use those things during the day.
In turn, we helped with some of the infrastructure, with some of the parking facilities.
We put in a running track and we open that up to the public.
We put in tennis courts at the junior high but that's open to the community.
We've had great success with our empty nesters supporting the school.
And I think part of that is that because they have access to some of the
facilities and they see that.
And they do understand that value of the good education and so
they're very invested in keeping the schools successful.
And they're very involved.
And so they see that we're really trying to be good stewards of their money
and they appreciate that.
This city also waived
all permit fees and inspection fees during that construction period.
So we've built a 250,000-square-foot junior high school
for approximately 1,800 students. And we came in under budget.
But we also saved quite a bit of money
on more land acquisition that would have been needed to provide the
sports fields, the playing fields, the parking facilities.
And that shared agreement saved us, saved the taxpayers,
hundreds of thousands of dollars in land acquisition
and also in construction of facilities for the kids to play on.
And in turn, the waiver of the fees has saved us about $300,000.