Watch thank you message from Supt. Heidi Eliopoulos

On Tuesday, April 3, voters in the Chippewa Falls community approved a referendum that will enable the district to fund much-needed facilities upgrades and address deferred maintenance.

The vote came after a more than year-long process to engage the community in a conversation about the district's facilities needs, including a survey in late 2017. In that survey, respondents said that they would likely support a future referendum and that they placed updates to Stillson Elementary School as the top priority.

The Chippewa Falls Area Unified School District will use the funds generated through the referendum to move forward on its Master Facilities Plan, developed in 2014. The plan calls for the following:

• Analyzing building enrollment capacity in light of a demographic study to be conducted by the district
• Projecting major capital improvement needs in each building
• Assessing aggregate as well as disaggregated maintenance costs for the District
• Determining the useful life of each district building
• Developing a comprehensive 25 year facility repair and/or replacement timeline

Now, the Board of Education will determine next steps, working with the district's architect, ATS&R. Among the priorities will be plans for a new Stillson Elementary and the purchase of land in Lafayette for a potential new school site. There will also be an addition, repairs and improvements at the middle school, along with a STEAM lab addition, repairs and betterment at the high school.

We would like to thank everyone—including our community members, alumni, staff and families—for your input, guidance and support as we've worked together to find solutions to the facilities needs of our Chippewa Falls schools. It has served as yet another example of what makes our community such a special place.