The school board meeting on Wednesday, May 17 will be at 7:30 a.m. in room 219. Members from our Student Leadership Team will be presenting to the school board, so we wanted to have the meeting at a time that was more convenient for their participation. Sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause. Let us know if you have any questions.

Van Meter CSD has partnered with the @Van Meter Community Development Corporation for this year’s Flag Program! For $35, Van Meter community members can have an American flag placed in their yard for the five major flag holidays.

Van Meter’s Future Farmers of America (FFA) will receive a portion of the funds from every flag purchase! To learn more and reserve your flags today, please visit https://vanmeterlife.com/flags/. We appreciate your support!

A few years ago, we shared information with the community about enrollment, open enrollment, tax rates, bond issues, and more. We are going to start sharing some of that information as well as videos created. Below is a video with information about bonding capacity, debt service, and taxes. As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me directly via email at deron.durflinger@vmbulldogs.com. I'd be happy to find a time to meet with you.

As all of us know, Van Meter is a rapidly growing community that many people have chosen to move to our have decided to open enroll into for a high-quality educational experience. As many of you may not know, that wasn't always the case.

The image below (you will need to zoom in or click on the link) is the enrollment for grades K-12 since 2003. (In 2019, we added TK, which increased the kindergarten enrollment numbers by 15 or 16 kids, and 2020 we added Preschool, so we are actually serving about 1090 kids in our building today.) From 2003-2013 our student enrollment increased by about 150 kids. That is a slow growth of about 10-15 students per year on average with some years even seeing a decrease in enrollment.

Things started to change a little more quickly from 2014-2017 as our enrollment increased by 175 students. In 2017, we saw an 84 student increase alone! Since 2017, we have increased enrollment by 200 students. This enrollment growth can be traced to a significant increase in the number of resident students in our district.

As housing developments continue to be established in our district, we anticipate our enrollment to continue to increase quickly over the next several years. This will put pressure on our building and classroom sizes, but we will continue to provide a great learning experience for our students. Be looking for more information about future facilities soon.

Around the 2015-2016 school year, the Van Meter School Board decided to start getting much more restrictive on open enrollment. Prior to 2015, pretty much all open enrollment applications were accepted and there was even an effort to promote all of the great things we were doing as a district to get more students to attend school in Van Meter. Starting in about 2015, guidelines were established that limited open enrollment by grade levels. Those guidelines have continued to evolve and today are limited to kindergarten applicants or students of employees in other grades as well as a few other exceptions. More information about open enrollment can be found here.

The guidelines established by the board have helped maintain the revenue stream created by open enrolled in students, but have allowed the district to better manage its growth. The data in the next image shows the number of open enrolled in and open enrolled out students and how they have changed over the years. As you can see from the table below, two things have happened, we have seen an increase in the number of students coming in and we have seen a decrease in the number of students going out. This has led to a significant net gain of students served in our district. The other interesting thing to note is that as we started to see almost 1/4 of our students being served were open enrolled in the board instituted guidelines to restrict open enrollment and we have settled into around 17% of our current students open enroll in from other communities. Also, students who might be approved for open enrollment often are approved on the premise that they are moving into the district when the house their parents are building is completed.

The Board continues to monitor our enrollment each year and will do all that it can to balance our classroom spaces with the revenues generated from more students served. Updated guidelines for open enrollment will be approved at December's school board meeting.

Enrollment increases are great for our community, but it puts pressure on our facilities. The board is working hard to find the right time to go to voters requesting their support for another bond to build an elementary building. More information about future building plans can be found here and information about bonding capacity can be found in the document below the enrollment chart. The District will be reconvening the Facilities Committee in the near future to help provide feedback on what the board should consider for a future elementary. The plans linked will more than likely look different. A lot has to be considered when planning a future facility including:

• Cost
• Bonding Capacity
• Bond Election
• Tax Rate
• Location
• Type of building (Elementary, MS, HS)
• Addition vs new structure
• Traffic flow and parking
• Extracurricular space
• Cafeteria space
• and MORE!

As many of you know, we have worked hard to maintain a tax rate of near $16.00/$1000 of assessed valuation. This has required the School Board and District to make decisions around its management fund, cash reserve, and debt service. Those levies are the primary levies the School Board can adjust. Most of our tax rate is set through the school funding formula established by the state and the Board can't do much to adjust it. However, for FY 23, the Board has decided to increase the debt service levy to pay off more of our previous debt so we will be in a better position to build a new facility. This is a great strategy and will save taxpayer dollars in the long run. Below is information on our tax rate and how it shows how the Board dropped the rate several dollars and has maintained the rate at near $16.00 for the last ten years. Next year's tax rate will be decided in the spring. If you need more information on school taxes, contact Shonna or Deron in the office or ask your board members.

It has been almost ten years since our last bond issue and a lot has changed in our district. The information shared in today's Bulldog Brief is to give you some insight on the work the Board and District have done to put us in the best position financially to serve both our students and our community. Below are two documents we used to communicate about our most recent bond issue. We have maintained our promise to provide the best facilities possible and to be considerate of our taxpayers. As we continue to grow, we will need support from our community to help provide the funds need to build another building so we can continue to provide a high-quality learning environment in class sizes we can all support.

Thanks for all you do to support our school system. Again, if you have any questions about the tax rate, bonding capacity, enrollment, open enrollment, or any other school-related issues, don't hesitate to reach out to the admin team or our school board members.

Email: firstname.lastname@vmbulldogs.com
Website: www.vmbulldogs.com
Location: 520 1st Avenue, Van Meter, IA, USA
Phone: (515) 996-2221
Facebook: https://facebook.com/VanMeterSchools/
Twitter: @vanmeterschools