Learn More About Our Facility’s Challenges
Kingsland is proud to provide small class sizes that help improve the educational experience for our students and programming and curriculum designed to best meet our students’ needs.
So, what are our facility challenges, and how do those challenges impact our students, staff, and communities? 1) Our school requires critical maintenance improvements to continue serving Kingsland well, and 2) our school requires improved, dedicated spaces to meet today’s educational needs.
Our school requires critical maintenance improvements to continue serving Kingsland well.
We are thankful our district was able to remodel the first and second floors of the 1957 portion of our building using board-approved funding in 2019, however, additional physical facility needs remain and have only increased in urgency since that time. Our maintenance staff has done a good job taking care of our facility, but annual state-provided funds only go so far.
Our primary physical facility needs that exceed available funding provided by the State of Minnesota include:
Ultimately, our building is aging and our facility challenges impact our students, staff, and community. The school board feels confident the proposed plan best addresses our district’s educational and physical facility needs.
Our school requires improved, dedicated spaces to meet today’s educational needs.
Educational delivery has greatly changed since our building was originally built in 1957. At the time, our facility provided general classrooms along with space for Early Childhood and Special Education. In 1962, space to support music and physical education was added; a Career and Technical Education (CTE) shop was added in 1976; and classrooms, office space, cafeteria, and kitchen space were added in 2008.
Although our district has operated well with a single facility for the past seven years, some of our existing spaces are not currently accommodating our evolving programming and curriculum. Programming and education will only continue to grow and evolve over time, and our goal is to provide right-sized educational spaces to ensure all students succeed. Results from our space utilization efficiency study showed that several classrooms are undersized, support spaces and Special Education spaces are 32% below MDE’s guidelines, and educational day-use gymnasium space is 27% below MDE’s guidelines.
In addition, what our district provides to our community today has changed since our original facility was built. For example, since our building was originally built, breakfast is now provided and adult programming is included as part of Community Education. Currently, the district does not have dedicated Community Education space, which limits adult and community programs to outside school hours when classrooms can be shared. Also, space for flexible, multipurpose programming, such as student clubs and curricular activities, is limited.
We lack dedicated space to support our physical education curriculum during the school day. While the existing cafeteria has been repurposed as an auxiliary gym for after-school activities, it is currently used to provide three breakfast periods and four lunch periods for PK-12 students throughout the school day. This means all K-12 physical education classes must be held in the main gym during the school day. Class schedules for all elementary and high school classes, including math and reading, are developed around the availability of shared gym space for physical education classes, which limits flexibility and course offerings for all core content areas.
In addition, our original locker rooms, located in the lower level of our building, require significant mechanical, electrical, and plumbing upgrades, and are not ADA-compliant. Our existing weight room is also undersized and not ADA-compliant and is housed at the site of the former stage on the east side of our competition gym.
