P7161 Planning, Providing, and Maintaining School Facilities

The Board of Education shall project needs for, provide, and maintain school facilities as needed to accommodate the number of students desiring to attend public schools. Within the limits of financial capabilities, facilities shall be designed to house the types of programs required for quality educational experiences for students at all educational levels. 

Administrative Implemental Procedures: 

1. Building administrators and central office staff members shall work cooperatively with local realtors; residential, commercial, and industrial land developers; governmental agencies; and others to project school-building needs. 

2. The school administration shall work closely with the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission to identify residential areas with greatest needs to plan for and provide educational facilities needed to accommodate school age students. 

3. Officials of the school district shall maintain regular contact with staff members of the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, the Wichita Local Housing Authority, and the Boards of City and County Commissioners to acquire statistical data regarding the effect of housing developments on school facilities. 

4. Current Board of Education policy provides for the acquisition of potential school sites before developments occur, and such sites shall be acquired, subject to available funding, at the earliest opportunity by the Board of Education. 

5. The Board of Education may utilize temporary measures to house students residing in areas under development until permanent residential housing units are constructed and occupied. 

6. Permanent buildings to replace temporary accommodations will be constructed in areas where additional school facilities are needed as soon as resources are available. 

7. Existing facilities shall be maintained primarily through resources available in the general fund budget and supplemented by funds allocated from the Capital Outlay Fund. 

8. The Capital Outlay Fund shall be used principally to maintain and remodel existing structures, provide small additions to buildings, and to construct a limited number of new buildings. 

9. Facilities constructed to meet extensive demands for new buildings, or the extensive upgrading existing of existing facilities, shall be financed through general obligation bonds approved by the general public of the school district in a successful bond election. 

10. In the establishment of priorities for the expenditure of available monies, both the improvement or replacement of existing buildings and the construction of new additional facilities will be considered. 

Administrative Responsibility: Facilities Division 

Latest Review Date: June 2017  

Previous Revision Date: August 1996 P7161 

Updated administratively for alignment purposes: April 2021 

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