A mothballed school will accept its first students next fall, a swimming pool will reopen, the school district will avert at least $7 million in cuts and Superintendent Sue Ann Gruver was, to sum it up, "extremely happy" after voters approved a levy request in the Prior Lake-Savage school district.
"It is a very, very good day in Prior Lake-Savage area schools," she said Wednesday, a day after 55 percent of the district's voters approved its base request.
But south-metro school referendum results were mixed even within the Prior Lake-Savage district, where voters narrowly rejected the second of two levy questions. Inver Grove Heights voters easily renewed school funding that will not result in a tax increase but will still leave an estimated $1.2 million gap in next year's district budget. And the Jordan school board will have to sharpen its pencils to find up to $425,000 in cuts after 60 percent of voters nixed a levy request that would have raised roughly $670,000 a year.
"Obviously, the taxpayers must think we have a little bit of work left to do," said Dan Buresh, chairman of the Jordan school board. Jordan schools have made more than $600,000 in cuts ranging from teachers to classroom supplies over the past four years, according to the district. It's unclear what will go next, but Buresh said the board will take another look at the list of possible cuts it consulted last year. "Everything we didn't touch will fall back on the table," he said.
The exact amount of cuts in Jordan and Inver Grove Heights will depend on a number of factors, including how the Legislature responds to the souring economy and a projected state budget deficit when it considers education funding this session.
"Because there's no new money, we must change," said Inver Grove Heights Superintendent Deirdre Wells, who said she is honored that voters approved renewing roughly $1.5 million in annual revenue.
The levy passage in the Prior Lake-Savage district renews $7 million a year in operating funds and gives the district an additional $1.65 million a year to reopen the pool at Twin Oaks Middle School, hire two teachers and run Redtail Ridge Elementary. The brand-new school is sitting empty this year because the district said it couldn't afford to open it after voters defeated a school referendum last fall.
A second question that would have raised $700,000 a year to reduce class sizes failed, with 51 percent of voters casting "no" ballots.
Not all incumbents elected
South-metro elections also yielded a crop of new faces on school boards, including one in Lakeville and two each in the Farmington and Burnsville-Eagan-Savage districts.
Lakeville voters reelected Judy Keliher and Kathy Lewis but replaced Ron Schieck with former Lakeville City Administrator Bob Erickson. In the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district, voters chose Sandra Sweep; DeeDee Currier, a former principal of Sioux Trail Elementary in Burnsville, and Ron Hill, the lone incumbent seeking reelection.
In Farmington, several of the candidates competing for three seats cited discontent with district financial decisions and a perceived lack of openness on the school board among their reasons for running.
On Tuesday, voters cast the most ballots for incumbent Julie McKnight, the board's chairwoman, but also elected Tim Burke, a vocal critic of district leaders who led a successful campaign last year against a referendum to build a $24 million "sports and wellness" addition to Farmington's new high school.
So what message are voters sending the district? "I'm a little confused," said Burke, the top vote-getter in September's primary election. Burke's engagement with the board, which has often been contentious, goes back nearly two years, he said, to when he started attending Farmington school board meetings as a citizen. When he began asking questions about district business, that "immediately made me suspect, because that meant I wasn't drinking the Kool-Aid," he said.
Now that voters have elected him, his relationship with other board members will be a "two-way street," he said.
McKnight said she's optimistic that the board and Burke will find a way to work together. "I think he'll find that there are less issues than he might have perceived," she said. "On the other hand, he will push us and question us in ways that will make us look at things differently."
Sarah Lemagie • 952-882-9016