Kansas City Public Schools wastes no time starting projects after $474M bond passes

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - Kansas City voters approved a $474 million bond for Kansas City Public Schools on Tuesday. Now, the district is wasting no time on getting started on the many projects proposed in the bond campaign.

“The City of Kansas City and the School District’s successes intertwined. The best thing that we can do is bet on tomorrow by investing in our kids today and 85% of voters did just that,” said Kansas City Councilman, Jonathan Duncan.

KCPS has gone 58 years without a bond and no new construction in 30 years.

“Time to set our schools up for a sustainable future, time for actions that match our rhetoric, and time to invest our children’s present and their future,” said Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Jennifer Collier.

KCPS said work will start nearly immediately with the first project breaking ground in two weeks on April 23 at 4301 Indiana, the King Empowerment Campus. It’s a $68 million project and will include a new elementary school, a pre-k center, and a family empowerment center.

“One of the things I heard loud and clear from our community over and over again is that our district made a promise that when King Weeks closed and they were moved to another building that in a few years their building would be rebuilt back in their neighborhood and they would be moved back to the neighborhood that never happened,” said Collier. “So after hearing that over and over again so we felt it was important to let our community know we heard you.”

KCPS promises all schools and some charter schools will see change.

Every KCPS school will get at least $5 million for upgrades to classrooms, and restrooms, repair heating and cooling systems, implementation and upgrades to safety and security features, and update other infrastructure needs.

It’s something the community will be able to follow along through an online dashboard.

“There will also be an oversight committee that will be working with us, monitoring the work that we are doing, monitoring the projects, and annually they will also be reporting out on our progress where we are and really demonstrating that KCPS and our charter schools are doing what we said we would do with the funds that our community said yes to,” said Collier.

Another big change, the Manuel Career and Technical Education Center off Truman Road will be relocated to Central High School. The building it sits in now will be put up for sale.

“That will be one of the buildings that is coming offline and we will be co-locating our career technical education center at Central High School that was one of our buildings that was greatly underutilized and we want to address some of those inefficiencies,” said Collier.

This historic moment the district said is allowing for a generational shift.

“We don’t want our kids walking into other schools and saying Why doesn’t my school look like this? I have had those questions I’ve had students ask me that and it is one of the most heartbreaking things to hear from our children, they won’t have to ask that question anymore. We can now begin the work of making meaningful fixes to our district’s most critical deficiencies while also creating modern learning spaces for our students, staff, and families in our community,” said Dr. Collier.

She added, “The story of a school district that has turned a corner and worked hard to rebuild trust with our community the story of students, staff, and families seeing an exciting future and a district that is on an upswing, if we only had educational spaces to match, well now we will. It is because of you, Kansas City.”

This is just the beginning for the district as this bond won’t cover all the needs for KCPS.

“With our deferred maintenance of 650 million and then about 600 million in need to modernize our schools we are looking at about $1.2 billion in need so clearly this bond passing is wonderful it is just the beginning. It will allow us to begin to address the needs across our system but there will still be more needs that we have over time that we need to address,” said Dr. Collier.

They anticipate phase one to take five to seven years to complete. A better timeline is expected to be released by the district soon.

You can follow the next steps for the district and the bond through the KCPS website.

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