The St. Joseph School District recently launched the first steps of its Master Facilities Plan process.

The plan process includes taking a look at school district buildings, systems and more.

Superintendent of Schools Doug Van Zyl said the process began last fall when the Board of Education hired an architectural group, along with a demographic team to do studies.

“(They have) been walking through our facilities, taking a look at what we have, what issues and concerns are there, taking a look at capacities and system’s determined age and just concerns and items in those areas,” Van Zyl said. “Then the demographics team gathered all the information to take a look at growth, projections of growth or decline of growth, where populations within our community are moving or leaving.”

Information from the studies will be presented at the next board meeting.

Van Zyl said as part of community engagement in the Master Facilities Plan process, there will be opportunities for public input through surveys and more. The first introductory survey was posted this week.

“Some background about, who you are in the district, your involvement, do you have kids, do you not have kids and then just some general thoughts in that first survey,” Van Zyl said. “More in-depth surveys will come out probably about specifics as we continue to go forward, but we wanted to at least start the process… and we’ll continue to communicate that as it goes forward so they can see how easy it is to share their input and be involved so that we can get a lot of engagement.”

Van Zyl said schools are the backbone of the community, which is why it’s important to have public input with the process.

“To have high-quality public schools within your community, I think, benefits everybody as a whole from property values to attracting businesses, to having high-quality people enter the workforce, school districts help the community thrive and grow,” Van Zyl said.

For more information and a link to the survey, go to sjsdfacilities.org.