The Winchester School District is looking to exercise the next step in a possible new school renovation project.
The district is working to create a survey with the help of consultants and focus groups consisting of parents, staff, landowners and other member of the community. This survey would collect more information on how much support the decision to build a new school would have. Previous forums have shown the community consensus leaning toward building a new school rather than making renovations to the existing school.
Winchester Superintendent Kevin Blankenship lays out the process of the surveys.
“We’re going to collect their input and develop a survey. We hope to roll that survey out here shortly in the first weeks of June. We’re going to open that up, we plan on sending it out to everyone in the Winchester school community, and were going to ask everybody to go in, fill out that survey so that our consultants can collect the information, do a data analysis for the board and then ultimately tell the board ‘Hey, here is what your community has said about the project as it stands now.’ And that will kinda give us more direction on weather or not we need to consider putting it on the ballot in November.”
Blankenship acknowledged some of the hurdles in the process such as a near doubling in the tax rate and the decreasing population in Scott County over the past few years.
Talks of Winchester and Bluffs consolidating schools were also noted, but there was little community traction to back the idea.