South Dakota’s fastest-growing school district wants to build two new buildings

South Sioux Falls will gain a new Harrisburg middle and high school – if voters approve.

While the community of Harrisburg continues to grow rapidly, most of the district’s more than 30,000 residents live in south Sioux Falls.

And many of them are families with school-age children.

Harrisburg has seen an average growth of 300 students annually over the past decade, which is projected to continue. Add it up, and you get a district that has grown 592 percent in the past 20 years.

“Our elementary school enrollment is so much higher,” Superintendent Tim Graf said. “A lot of growth is existing seniors and incoming freshmen.”

Want a glimpse of the future? Harrisburg graduates about 285 seniors this month. The district estimates it could exceed 500 kindergarteners next school year.

“I did know kind of what I was walking into,” said Graf, who has held the role for two years and is a friend of former Superintendent Jim Holbeck.

“So I knew the challenges, and none of that came as a surprise, but it’s energizing. And with growth comes positives, challenges but good challenges.”

Here’s one of them: Graf and the district are bringing a more than $55 million bond issue to voters with a June 1 election.

If approved, it would build a new middle school and begin to start a new high school.

The middle school would be the district’s third and be built south of 69th Street and Southeastern Avenue, addressing overcrowding, especially at Harrisburg’s North Middle School and balancing students among the three middle schools.

Harrisburg North was designed by Architecture Incorporated, which also is designing the potential new schools.

“We’re using the North Middle School floor plans, so that won’t be much different at all,” Graf said. “We expect it (growth) to be greatest in Harrisburg proper and the northwest part of the district in Horizon Elementary.”

The new school will include food service, a commons, gym, performing arts center, administrative offices, library, academic classrooms, athletic fields and a track.

The future second high school would start as a freshman academy for all the district’s ninth graders. It’s planned for land on the west side of Cliff Avenue and south of 85th Street.

Once enrollment in grades 9-12 reaches 2,200 to 2,400 students, the building would be completed to house students through senior year, and eventually high school boundary lines would be drawn.

The first phase is a two-story building with food service, a commons, auxiliary gym, administrative offices, library and academic classrooms plus site work for the expansion.

Outdoor areas include sub-varsity grass athletic fields and an asphalt track for gym classes. With phase two, the plan is both high schools will use the current stadium for varsity competitions.

The district looked at a couple of models, including one in Shakopee, Minnesota, where residents didn’t want to split into two high schools so tried “houses” within the building, which now has grown to 3,000 students and is almost full again.

It instead went with the model of West Fargo, North Dakota, another fast-growing district that used the approach with its second high school and now is opening a third.

“We did a deep dive,” Graf said. “(Not building a second building) is really just prolonging what we felt was inevitable. You still have to build at some point.”

Who pays for it?

The bond is structured so it will not involve additional taxes. That’s possible in part because Harrisburg is growing so much and there are continually more taxpayers. The district also has paid off some debt recently.

The vote essentially gives the district permission to borrow the money to build the schools.

Property taxes still could go up because the value of property goes up, but that would be because of assessed value increases.

If approved, design on the buildings would be done in July, construction would start in September, and they would open in 2023.

If it fails

If voters don’t approve the bond measure, the middle schools and the high school are anticipated to exceed capacity by 2023. Students would be bused farther to balance the middle schools. And it might be necessary to add portable or modular classrooms to all three buildings.

“The only other options other than trying to come back with another plan or run at it would be to do things that really are not as cost-effective in the long run,” Graf said. “But we’re hopeful and optimistic that approval will happen.”

In the meantime, Harrisburg’s new Adventure Elementary is scheduled to open this fall with 400 kids in grades K -5 plus the district’s gifted program. It’s in the area of South Louise not far from Bakker Crossing Golf Course.

“We actually shut down open enrollment this past year,” Graf said. “We had limited open enrollment where if people were in the district three years or longer they could be grandfathered, but that disappears June 30, and there won’t be any options. So that’s not driving anything.”

And looking out even farther, projections show the district’s population reaching 80,000 by 2075. A third high school would be needed if that proves true.

“That’s just crazy to think about,” Graf said. “But it’s over 10 times the growth in the next 50 years.”

To vote

Absentee voting is available before June 1. Download and print an absentee ballot application here.

Vote in person from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays at the district office in Harrisburg, 200 E. Willow St., or North Middle School in Sioux Falls at 2201 W. 95th St.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. June 1. Sioux Falls and Delapre Township residents will vote at North Middle School; residents of Harrisburg and the townships of Springdale, Dayton, LaValley and Perry will vote in the HSD Community Room at Liberty Elementary, 200 E. Willow St. in Harrisburg.