BAckground Information

Over the past year, the district has worked through the Finance and Facilities Committee and the Community Facilities Task Force to engage families, students, staff, and community members around the collaborative development of facility goals to meet capacity and growing activity needs of the district.

An essential part of an upcoming referendum is an application to the Minnesota Department of Education, called Review and Comment. A review and comment (R&C) is required for school facility projects with costs in excess of $500,000 per site if the district has a capital loan outstanding or $2 million per school site for all other districts unless the projects are exempted from R&C. The Review and Comments can be viewed here.

Ehlers, the district’s municipal advisors, have prepared the following schedules and includes:

• Estimated sources and uses of funds for the proposed bond issue
• Estimated debt payment structure for the proposed bond issue, including principal and interest payments and annual debt service property tax levies after accounting for the 105% levy requirement (the district is expected to qualify for debt equalization aid)
• An analysis of the estimated tax impact on various values of residential, commercial, agricultural, and seasonal recreational properties for the proposed bond issue

The finance schedule can be reviewed here.

Additional school building bond referendum information can be viewed here.

The Byron School Board reached out to all District residents to gather input regarding potential facility updates and expansion with a community-wide survey (September 2019) . To assist with data gathering efforts, the district contracted with School Perceptions LLC, an independent firm with expertise in conducting school district surveys.

• Survey
• Executive Summary
• Presentation

Here is an online calculator and additional property tax information regarding the May 12, 2020 referendum.

An enrollment study was conducted by Hazel Reinhardt in 2017. Learn more here.

The purpose of the Byron Community Facilities Task Force (CFTF) was to analyze pertinent information and examine the use of existing space in the Byron Public Schools and consider additional space into the future. Following the Community Survey regarding facilities in the fall of 2019, the District held a series of 17 task force meetings to bring forward proposals for the Board to discuss and consider. The meetings were be distributed across a variety of stakeholder groups: landowners, business owners, staff, community and parents. Learn more here.

The Byron Finance and Facilities Committee (FFC) participates in general financial and facilities planning for the Byron Public Schools. In order to maintain the high standards set by Byron School Board, the FFC focuses on ways to enhance available resources to achieve our district's mission. Learn more here.

The state of Minnesota has the constitutional responsibility for education and the equality of opportunity for students to learn and that includes the physical environment that school facilities provide for learning and teaching. Decisions on school construction projects in Minnesota are a state and local school district matter and there have been and are laws, rules, codes, standards, and guidelines governing the school construction process that go back to the 1800's. Similarly, there are laws, rules, codes, standards, and guidelines governing the construction of homes and commercial buildings, health hospital and nursing home practices, food preparation in restaurants, purification of water, road improvements, and practices by doctors, lawyers, government agencies, and businesses. Learn more here.

• Tools for financing capital projects
• Additional school building bond referendum information can be viewed here.