A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
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After opening its gym to volleyball practice on July 6, officials at Wrenshall High School had to soon shut everything down as a friend and fellow student of the volleyball players tested positive for Covid-19. Superintendent Kim Belcastro made the case public Monday at the monthly school board meeting. She said the positive case shows just how vigilant students and staff need to be as schools try to reopen this fall despite the ongoing pandemic. “We notified all players that all volleyball activities will be shut down for two weeks,” said act...
It's high and dry in Idaho. When she felt the humidity here, Brittany Peterson immediately knew she was back home. The Carlton native and elite trail runner was trying to take advantage of a COVID-19 pandemic break in her race schedule to fulfill a dream - running the 310-mile Superior Hiking Trail that cuts right through her old stamping grounds. As a cross country runner in high school, training runs were taken along the trail in Jay Cooke State Park. It was all coming back to her in the...
The weather is heating up and so is berry season. Despite struggles with keeping plants watered during what has been a dry spring and early summer in Carlton County, strawberries are ripe at Spectrum Farm as well as honeyberries at Farm LoLa, both southeast of the Interstate 35 corridor from Cloquet. There is a convenient website to keep up with picking seasons at seven county berry farms, CarltonCountyFruit.org. Expect raspberries later in July and then blueberries. The site has links to each f...
For some, the slow opening of youth sports in Minnesota during the COVID-19 pandemic comes too late. For others, it offers a ray of hope for action outside of practice. State health officials announced this week that youth sports games can start in the coming weeks. Outdoor sports could return to games and scrimmages starting Wednesday and indoor sports July 1 or later under the Minnesota Department of Health's recommended guidance. Cloquet's Arrowhead Fastpitch League canceled the summer...
The two districts attempting to pull off a consolidation in the next year showed strikingly different anticipated budgets for the next year. The Carlton and Wrenshall school boards met in regular monthly sessions Monday night via online platforms. Carlton continues to bleed money. Board members passed a budget showing that revenues in the 2020-2021 school year won’t keep up with expenses by about $457,000. It’s a continuing pattern for the district that is slowly eating away at its budget reserves as enrollment continues to dwindle. Out...
The minutes from the Perch Lake Township annual meeting in March were stark. “The sewer project is dead.” After months of negotiations in 2019, the failure to reach a new joint powers agreement between the Big Lake Area Sanitary District and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa made clear in December that the death notice for improving lake water quality was nigh. Sanitary district chairman John Frederickson wrote the obituary on Dec. 12, saying all efforts to resolve differences between the district and the band “have been exhausted...
Geese honked in unison overhead. Then, after they passed over, the few of the formation's stragglers gave fading squawks individually. Birds chirped from newly flowered fauna. There were the whirs and clicks from media photographers and rumblings of traffic on an overcast and, when the breeze kicked up, chilly late Saturday afternoon. The small clock tower at Cloquet City Hall showed 6 p.m. Now there was the shuffling of feet, some of the more than 60 bodies here repositioning on the asphalt...
The Carlton school board has chosen its next superintendent to replace Gwen Carman, who is leaving for a job in southeastern Minnesota. John Engstrom said the Carlton job appealed to him because it's a one-year stint and not too far from where he is living, southwest of Minneapolis near Lake Minnetonka. The school board officially hired Engstrom during an online meeting Monday. The district will pay Engstrom $108,243 on a one-year contract that begins July 1. Engstrom's last job was at Friess...
School board members got a glimpse this month of what a budget for a Carlton and Wrenshall consolidated district might look like. Some rough data project a significant fund balance increase for school operations in a consolidation. With current enrollment staying intact, savings in administrative salary costs would drive a $786,200 balance of revenues over expenditures. Representatives from Arrowhead Regional Computing Consortium presented the numbers during a joint meeting of the district school boards online last week. ARCC’s Jennifer S...
When the Minnesota Legislature ended earlier this week without passing major bonding and tax bills, those waiting for funding word in Carlton County had to feel the sting. The failure to meet the deadline, and the push into a likely special session in mid-June, has ramifications from water lines to school consolidation to the county jail funding prospects. Remaining in limbo is the measure that would have brought millions into the Carlton-Wrenshall school consolidation plan. A planned August referendum, asking residents for money to pay for the...
The school boards from Carlton and Wrenshall earlier this week approved in separate online meetings a consolidation plan to be sent to the Minnesota Department of Education. It’s a formal step in a process with many parts as the districts edge closer to pairing up and forming an elementary school in Carlton and a middle and high school in Wrenshall. The plan sent to the state describes how a combined district would spend $39.7 million to shore up the schools and grounds in each city to accommodate the influx of students in a consolidation. The...
The Cloquet school district made graduation ceremony plans before Minnesota Department of Health officials joined state education commissioners last week to announce guidelines for schools honoring senior classes. In short, schools, colleges and universities are being asked to host virtual graduation ceremonies people can watch from home. But many schools are attempting to do more than that by offering a more participatory approach for seniors. Cloquet's plans for a drive-in-style movie of...
About 14 years ago, Kate Isles gave her partner in life and music, Bill Isles, some direction while they were driving in St. Cloud. "Don't go down by the bridge," Bill recalls Kate saying. "(And) I just bellowed out 'Stay up high on the ridge.'" And that was the innocuous lyrical beginning of what became the song "Flood Waters," released on an album the couple produced in 2011. It became an audience favorite for the musical duo from Duluth that has a cabin and studio on Hay Lake in Carlton...
A joint committee made up of school board members from Carlton and Wrenshall districts is chipping away at site plans for a consolidated district. The boards have to submit a plan to the Minnesota Department of Education next week on what it will be asking voters for in a planned referendum in August. But that hinges on the current state legislature passing a measure in its bonding bill allocating money to schools seeking consolidation — and the legislature needs to finish its work by May 18. The joint facilities commission decided late last m...
Reflecting what all Minnesotans are seeing in their local economies during the COVID-19 “stay at home” orders, the jobless numbers that are coming out are startling and historic. And they are rising by the scores daily in counties across the state. Carlton County had 3,171 people file for unemployment insurance March 16 through April 20. That is 17.4 percent of the available workforce. Nearby counties in the northeastern had similar numbers: • St. Louis: 18.6 percent. • Pine: 19.2 percent. • Lake: 20.2 percent. • Aitkin: 17 percent. Th...
Gwen Carman, superintendent of the Carlton school district, has resigned. In a letter to school board chairwoman LaRae Lehto dated April 14, Carman said she had accepted the superintendent position in the Lewiston-Altura school district in southeastern Minnesota. Her resignation will be effective June 30. Her new job begins with the start of the school calendar year on July 1. The Carlton school board voted to accept the resignation during its regular meeting Monday, which was held online. “We’re sad to see her go,” board chairwoman LaRae...
Things are a "lot different" at Carlton County post offices these days. Different from normal times. Of course, these are pandemic times, and the people who sort and deliver mail are trying to practice social distancing just like everyone else. Carriers are wearing gloves and other protective gear. There are floor markings at the post office, reminding customers to keep their distance from one another. You'll see sneeze guards and hand sanitizer. And, as hard as it may be for both parties, now...
Cloquet native Dr. Kelly Cawcutt is an assistant professor of medicine and board certified in critical care medicine and infectious diseases with an academic and clinic practice at University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. She is a 2000 graduate of Cloquet High School and is the daughter of Daryl and Doreen Hendrickson of Cloquet. She is married to Carlton native Michael Cawcutt. Kelly graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School and completed her residency in internal...
Gwen Carman, superintendent of the Carlton school district, has resigned. In a letter to school board chairwoman LaRae Lehto dated April 14, Carman said she had accepted the superintendent position in the Lewiston-Altura school district in southeastern Minnesota. Her resignation will be effective June 30. Her new job begins with the start of the school calendar year on July 1. Carman had interviewed for at least three superintendent jobs in the past few months. She was a finalist in Minnesota districts in Mora and St. James. Carman will leave...
The Wrenshall School Board earlier this week approved bids for indoor air quality improvements at the school in Wrenshall. The board accepted the low bid of $4,158,000 from Max Gray Construction out of Hibbing to improve air quality in the older parts of the school. The board also accepted a bid of $436,922 from Mavo Systems out of Duluth for asbestos abatement. The board approved bonding for the work last year without a referendum from voters. Superintendent Kim Belcastro has said the work was too vital to wait for any improvements that might...
Can you imagine pastors Jeff Walther and Tom Brinkley preaching from the roof of St. Matthews Lutheran Church in Esko on Easter Sunday? Below them in the parking lot are parishioners in their cars dialed into an FM frequency on their radios, listening and reciting the Lord's Prayer. A few months ago, there would be laughter about such a stunt. Today, in a pandemic world, the plans at St. Matthews seem ingenious and hopeful. "It has forced us to be creative but stay within the guidelines,"...
It was Christmas Eve and traffic was expectedly heavy on the interstate just north of Minneapolis. David Rice was headed home to Cloquet from a temporary construction job. He wasn't exactly in the holiday spirit. He was going through a divorce and in limbo about his work. The heaviness was there when a pickup suddenly passed him and then shot into his lane in front of him. The driver overcorrected and the truck left the road and did a barrel roll into the ditch off Interstate 494 in Plymouth....
The Wrenshall school board wanted the full support of the Carlton school board this week when it comes to the next steps of the school district consolidation process. But some Carlton school board members are still lukewarm about the two-site plan. And that’s despite an overwhelming majority of constituents indicating via a recent survey that they want the districts to consolidate with two school locations, and that they are willing to pay for it. On Monday, the Wrenshall board approved a resolution that the districts would move forward and l...
Sue Peterson had some choice words about the survey results released this week regarding how residents feel about the possible consolidation of the Carlton and Wrenshall school districts. “Atypical.” “Shocking.” “Surprising.” Peterson works for School Perceptions, the company hired by the school districts to guide the survey. The school boards wanted a clear idea of where residents stood on consolidation and the costs to accomplish it. They want it. And they seem willing to pay for it as well....
It was supposed to be an "impromptu" act, a quiet ceremony more for employees than the general public. There was likely good reason to keep things on the down-low. While the Northern Pacific Railroad had been buoyed the month before by a cash infusion from Jay Cooke, it really was nowhere near ready to begin the Herculean task of laying a rail line from Lake Superior to the Pacific Ocean. But word got out. People traveled by rail from Duluth and Superior on the new Lake Superior & Mississippi...
