Grand Meadow: Unique times, unique solutions

GRAND MEADOW, MINN. - The Grand Meadow school district has many unique features, including the school itself. It consists of five connected domes, each 40 feet high and 150 feet in diameter. Built in 2002, the school is economical to heat and cool and houses 370 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

Grand Meadow's 2-year-old football field also is unique. On the second floor of a three-level press box are four "luxury suites" ... but people in town smile when they say those words.

The suites are simply four rooms, separated by waist-high walls, in which auction and raffle winners watch the Super Larks' nine-man football games. The money raised by the suites, around $1,000 per game, goes back into maintaining the facility.

Every dollar counts in this little school district, where the graduation rate is 100 percent over the past 10 years and townspeople pitch in whenever they can. When the football and track facility was built, more than $250,000 in volunteer labor and equipment was used.

"This town really comes together," said football coach Gary Sloan.

Voters, however, rejected a levy referendum last fall, then approved one of two levy measures in April. That helped stem the budget cutting, but the district remains in financial peril. This year the school has the equivalent of 32.6 full-time teachers; that number will drop by 4.7 in the fall. Going to a four-day week is a possibility.

More than 200 Grand Meadow residents work at the Mayo Clinic in nearby Rochester. Even though the enrollment in Grand Meadow is growing (the K-12 number went from 350 in 2007-08 to 370 this year), more than $300,000 must be trimmed from the 2008-09 budget. Included in that is the elimination of next year's baseball, softball and golf teams.

Grand Meadow students join with students from Southland to form boys' and girls' golf teams, and with LeRoy-Ostrander and Kingsland for baseball and softball. Ending those opportunities will save Grand Meadow nearly $11,000, most of it in transportation costs.

Superintendent Joe Brown blames the manner in which Minnesota funds education.

"Our school is growing," he said. "We should have gobs of money and we don't. Our children are just as important as children in Eden Prairie and Wayzata. They have the same right to a quality education.

"Is there a group of people in politics who would like to eliminate public schools in Minnesota? I think there is. I think we're going to become a second-tier state."

He argues that the trouble began when Jesse Ventura was governor and current governor Tim Pawlenty was majority leader of the Minnesota House of Representatives.

"To me, that was the start of the end," he said. "The big income tax cuts of 1999-2000, when they cut a billion dollars off the income taxes, that's exactly what public education is short right now. We are $1 billion short in funding."

Brown is familiar with the legislative process. He is a former Iowa state senator and his wife, Robin Brown, is a first-term DFL member of the Minnesota House of Representatives.

"We moved across the border in 1993 with our six kids because at that time Minnesota was the No. 1 state for kids," said Joe Brown, a former principal at Austin High School who has been superintendent in Grand Meadow for three years.

"I'm extremely upset. I'm disappointed in the Legislature and I'm disappointed in the governor. Just like he was not willing to put money into roads and bridges, the infrastructure of public education in Minnesota is cracking, just like the roads and bridges are."

The governor's office declined to respond to Brown's statements.

Grand Meadow sophomore Killian Smith, a three-sport athlete and president of the student council, said the elimination of some sports next year is already having an effect on students.

"I think a lot of them are upset about the cuts," he said. "They wish they could play. Without sports, kids wouldn't really be able to do anything. They would probably be involved in bad things. Sports give them something to do and something to look forward to.

"People don't realize what can happen to their kids. Someone paid for them to go to school and now it's their turn to pay for someone else to go to school."