Cloquet school taxes stay down; big grant awarded

Two pieces of great news came out of Monday’s Cloquet school board meeting:

1.The school district tax levy will increase by less than half a percent;

2.The district is part of a consortium of mostly Carlton County school districts that was awarded a $1.5 million grant ($750,000 each year for the next two years) to expand and explore the career and technical education programs in the area.

Other school districts in the group include Barnum, Carlton, Cromwell-Wright, Esko, McGregor, Moose Lake, Willow River and Wrenshall. All of the districts are part of the Northeast Area School Consortium, which applied for the Rural Career Technical Education and Consortium Grant as a team, superintendent Michael Cary explained.

“The goal first and foremost is for the school districts to be able to expand and improve their career and technical education for students,” Cary told the Pine Knot News. “The biggest piece is that it brings a lot of new money to upgrade and improve equipment for programming we (all districts) provide.”

As part of the grant process, Cary said Cloquet principals will be looking at area workforce needs for the next 10-20 years, so the schools can work to provide applicable job skills needed in the area.

Cary said he can’t predict exactly what other ideas will emerge from the collaborative efforts, but he is optimistic the group and the grant will create new opportunities for students across the county. Jim Schwarzbauer — who worked at Lake Superior College improving secondary and postsecondary career and technical education programs — will coordinate the grant process for the local schools.

Almost no new taxes

School board members set the levy increase at 0.4 percent Monday. The total levy to be paid by property taxpayers in 2020 is $6,986,288, an increase of $28,583 over the 2019 levy.

That includes all of the different school district levies, including debt service on building bonds approved by voters in 2015, OPEB bonding (to pay for retiree benefits) and funds for operations, among other things. The voter-approved debt service makes up the largest chunk of taxpayer funds, at 43 percent of the entire levy.

The levy itself makes up approximately 16 percent of the school district’s total revenues. The district’s full budget of $43,538,125. Salaries and wages make up 48 percent of district spending, followed by employee benefits at 16.8 percent and purchased services at 12.6 percent. Supplies and materials makes up 4.7 percent and capital expenditures makes up 4.4 percent.

No one from the public commented during the Truth in Taxation hearing.

Cloquet finance director Candace Nelis also walked the school board through several pages of comparisons with similarly sized school districts in both rural and metro areas, which are available at http://www.isd94.org under district information, school board information and meeting agenda packets.

Other business

• The school board approved hiring Don Gentilini as head boys baseball coach. Gentilini is employed as a school social worker at Churchill Elementary and has coached various levels of youth baseball over the past 25 years. He was the JV coach in Esko in 2002 and is currently the president of the Cloquet Amateur Hockey Association.

• In other sporting news, the board approved Bob Fox as a Nordic ski volunteer and accepted the resignation of the head boys golf coach Jonathan Horbacz, and will be posting for the position.

• Both elementary schools held flag ceremonies incorporating the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa into their schools.

• Superintendent Cary noted that with students recently moving into the district and open enrollment closed, Cloquet has more than 2,600 students.