September 11, 2008

Dear Readers,

One of my tasks as your superintendent of schools here in Parkers Prairie is to help answer questions regarding the upcoming levy referendum on November 4th.  We will be providing written information via our web site and brochure along with public dialog on October 20th @7:00 PM in the elementary gym when the Board of Education hosts a public referendum forum. But I would like to take this opportunity to address one issue. One of the more commonly asked questions is how did the Parkers Prairie School District get into a position that we would need additional tax payer support.

I believe it is important to state up front that there has not been any fiscal mismanagement or ill-advised spending by school officials. There are two reasons I can make that statement. The first is public schools are audited each year where any type of inappropriate action would be disclosed. I also reviewed the past audit reports and state records and there were no indications of any kind of inappropriate action. In fact the Board of Education has acted in a very prudent and ethical manner as they managed a budget that over the past years included declining enrollment and insufficient state funding.

The Parkers Prairie community is not alone in this predicament. There are forty-seven school districts going out for levies this fall alone. There are 331 school districts in the state today and approximately 97% of them have had to pass referendums in their districts to support their local schools. The situation has become direr over the past seven years as state legislators have failed to provide adequate funding for the state’s public school systems. John Fitzgerald writing in the Minneapolis Tribune on August 18, 2008 stated “Some may pooh-pooh these dire predictions, but the numbers don’t lie. Adjusted for inflation, state aid for schools has dropped by 13.4% since 2003. Schools have to lean on levies to keep their doors open”. The rising cost of inflation and the smaller increase in revenues puts rural school districts behind the “eight ball”.

Tied into an inadequate funding system is the enrollment factor where students determine the level of funding for each school. As enrollment changes so does the amount of funding going to the school system. Like Parkers Prairie, many rural school systems are experiencing a decline in their enrollment; some are more severe than others. When enrollment goes down, so does the state aid our school district needs to effectively operate our school system. So what happens when state funding does not keep up with district needs and enrollment is declining? School districts, like Parkers Prairie, must spend less and make cuts to balance their annual budgets. In our case, the school officials have adopted budgets that were spending more than they received in order to keep school programs intact and the necessary staff in place. It was a way to maintain the quality of education people in this community have grown to expect and appreciate. To offset the deficit spending budget school officials used the reserves or savings to maintain programs and staff. At some point in the past the reserves reached a threshold that prompted this district to ask taxpayers to support a levy.

It becomes a question of just how much more does the district cut from programs and staff before it is no longer the school district the community will support? What happens in the long run if the school system is not here? One answer lies with the local taxpayer as they decide by how they vote on referendums.  In the past, several levy requests by the district were successful but the last two in 2006 and 2007 failed. Now, without additional state funding, school districts will have to look to the local taxpayers again to help support their schools.

The situation we currently find ourselves in has been brewing for some time and over the years the Board of Education has responsibly dealt with managing the school system. One of the tools School Boards use is the referendum but it does require voter approval. So while this is not a new issue for Parkers Prairie it still becomes a major effort to provide our children a quality education, maintain our identity as a school system and keep those traditions alive that families have and will continue to appreciate well into the future.

One November 4th, Election Day, voters will consider many important issues and our school operating levy will be one of them. Please give the levy careful consideration and become an informed voter.

Respectfully submitted,

Superintendent Kent Baldry