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US senators stress importance of Douglas School expansion ahead of B-21 arrival • South Dakota Searchlight [1]
['Joshua Haiar', 'Searchlight Staff', 'Makenzie Huber', 'More From Author', '- October', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']
Date: 2024-10-24
SIOUX FALLS — Douglas School District’s $15 million state funding request to help build a new elementary school ahead of B-21 bombers arriving at Ellsworth Air Force Base has gained influential supporting comments.
U.S. Senators John Thune and Mike Rounds, both Republicans from South Dakota, spoke to a panel of state lawmakers Thursday.
“As you all think about these issues, you have a lot of issues to grapple with just like we do in Washington, trying to figure out how to prioritize and allocate resources to certain areas and hitting the targets you need to hit, but I would offer up to you how important I think this is,” Thune said.
The senators spoke to the Legislature’s Select Committee on Legislative Relationships with Ellsworth Air Force Base. The base, near Box Elder and Rapid City, is undergoing a flurry of construction to prepare for the arrival of B-21 bombers sometime this decade. The planes are under development for the Air Force by Northrop Grumman.
Rounds said the Air Force keeps an eye on schools near bases.
“In some cases,” he said, “the Air Force has challenged local school districts and said ‘we will pull current operating programs if you don’t maintain your school systems.'”
Rounds said a smooth transition to B-21s — which will eventually replace B-1 bombers at the base — is a matter of global security.
“The world is on fire right now,” he said, referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, and Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific.
He said the new bomber will instill fear in the nation’s enemies.
“The rest of the world will once again recognize that we are not retreating, we are not going away,” Rounds said.
As the base prepares for the arrival of the new bombers, the nearby Douglas School District is anticipating an influx of military-connected families, resulting in an estimated 1,500 new students.
Douglas Superintendent Kevin Case advocated for the funding request at the meeting, emphasizing the district’s currently limited capacity and the need for new facilities.
Although federal and local contributions will cover much of the $62 million school construction project, the district is seeking $15 million from the state to close the gap.
The committee ultimately decided to delay forwarding a recommendation to the legislative Executive Board. The decision came at the end of a meeting where members asked for more time to review the language of the request before submitting it.
Legislation that would have provided the money failed during last winter’s legislative session. The next session begins in January, when the budget situation is expected to be tighter now that the state has spent all of the federal pandemic relief money that padded the budget for several years.
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[1] Url:
https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2024/10/24/us-senators-stress-importance-of-douglas-school-expansion-ahead-of-b-21-arrival/
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