by the Sartell-St. Stephen school board
Thank you to the Sartell-St. Stephen community for your years of support in the growth and continued success of the school district. Your willingness to move to this community, reside in this community and your support at the polls is key to what makes this district great.
We are honored as school board members to represent this community. Our current board is made of six individuals who are passionate about the Sartell-St. Stephen school district and have a vested interest in seeing our district continue to succeed at the highest levels. This board is uniquely comprised of six parents that have 11 kids currently enrolled in our district, along with seven kids that have graduated during the last several years. For the second time in two years, this board has unanimously voted in favor of a new 10-year operating levy.
We invite our community to join us in support of the great students of our district by voting to approve a new $1.77-million operating levy. The Sartell-St. Stephen school district board understands the expectation of excellence from our community and we are committed to doing our very best to fulfill that charge. However, we cannot do it alone. Supporting leading-edge academic programs and providing an education that meets the changing needs of our students requires resources…and that is why we have asked our community to approve this financial need.
We are thankful to our community for approving a bond referendum in 2016. That building bond allowed for the construction of a new high school along with providing safe and secure entrances at Pine Meadow Elementary and Sartell Middle School and additional remodeling and reconfiguration projects at our other schools.
Our new high school adds an additional 300,000 square feet to support our student growth and learning needs. We are grateful our communities recognized and supported that need. At the time of the bond referendum vote, we shared it would be necessary to come back to voters to ask for funds to operate this additional space. We did not feel it fiscally prudent to ask taxpayers for the operating levy at the same time since the additional funding was not required until 2019. We made that ask in November 2018, unfortunately without success. The need for additional funding still exists which is why we are making the request again.
We held several listening sessions after last year’s failed levy vote. We heard from several of you that you wanted us to take a closer look at our budget and you also wished we would have done more to explain why the levy was needed and what would happen if another levy failed.
Earlier this spring we made $1.3 million in budget reductions. These reductions included transportation changes, reduction of administrative staff and administrative pay freezes, increased activity fees, reductions to certified and noncertified staff, along with several new district needs which were placed on hold.
If we are successful and this levy passes, as a district we will be able to maintain current class sizes, maintain and grow Pre-K-12 academic programming, and extra-curricular programming along with supporting the operations of all school buildings.
If we are unsuccessful and this levy does not pass, we will again be forced to make tough budget decisions resulting in significant reductions. Among things we will need to consider: increasing class sizes, significant changes to student transportation practices and cuts to academic programs and activities.
On Tuesday, Nov. 5: Vote for our future. Vote for our community. Most importantly, vote for our students.
