Board approves modest levy increase

The final school board meeting of the year in Wrenshall on Monday featured a host of financial housekeeping updates for a district in cut-mode as it tries to account for a drop in enrollment and subsequent decline in state funding.

The board’s final levy certification included a 1.58-percent increase to $1.52 million — the amount of money district property owners’ taxes will account for on the district’s estimated $6.2 million budget in 2023. That budget is in flux, needing to come down from the figure previously approved in June.

The school’s levy increase will join with municipal levies and the county’s 6.9-percent levy increase. Not all of those increases are necessarily absorbed by property owners, provided a jurisdiction’s residential and business communities are growing in order to spread the burdens from each of the levies.

Board member-elect Ben Johnson, serving his final meeting as a board appointee, asked if Jen Smith could predict what sort of help the Minnesota State Legislature could offer schools, given the state’s $17.6 billion surplus.

“I wish I had a crystal ball,” said Smith, a financial specialist from Arrowhead Regional Computing Consortium, a cooperative service which aids districts in its financial and data management.

Smith described talk of 5-percent increases in each of the next two years in the per-pupil funding allocation as “aggressive,” and suspected more conservative legislative blocs will draw back those sorts of increases. In recent years, school districts have come to expect 2-percent increases annually.

“My hope is something more than 2 (percent) over two years (each),” Smith said.

Any additional money will help a district that cut roughly $35,000 off its current budget and will look to cut an additional $265,000 from this year’s budget by the end of the school year. Meanwhile, the new board that’s set to be sworn in next month will also be making moves to bring down next year’s budget.

Not all the talk at the meeting was about money. Outgoing members Jack Eudy, Deb Washenesky and appointee Cindy Bourn bid farewell to the board. They shared polite exchanges with superintendent Kim Belcastro, whom they’d previously challenged to resign during an acrimonious fall.

Belcastro has since said she’s retiring with an expectation she’ll be needed at least on a part-time basis through the end of the school year.

Eudy urged the district to continue to develop its new Career and Technical Education program.

“I encourage everyone to keep moving forward on this,” he said.

The program is designed to attract students to the trades and expose them to other skills-based careers, including graphic design and entrepreneurship. Eudy and Washenesky described it as a way to improve enrollment and return the district to solid financial ground.

Visiting parents Katie Beck and her husband, Jon, offered a different perspective on attracting newcomers to the district.

“I talk to families about Wrenshall, I love it so much,” said Katie, a Cloquet native. “I’m like a walking billboard.”

The Becks presented their experience with having two young children in Wrenshall. The youngest, Lilly, is deaf and involved in early childhood programs. They described a district that has nurtured their daughters, with classmates learning American Sign Language.

“Wrenshall has embraced who (Lilly) is,” Jon said, adding that the district does a good job of showing kids that “people are different.”

Katie encouraged the district to continue to develop its early childhood options as a way to attract new student enrollees into the district.

“We’re really blessed to be here,” she said.

Following a series of action items voted on by the board, it formally thanked Charlie and Earleen Hanson for a $10,000 donation to the Career and Technical Education program. It was among a host of smaller charitable offerings to a district in need.

“It’s going to be a very busy spring,” Belcastro concluded, alluding to further budget cuts, including the loss of some teaching positions at the end of this school year.

Newly elected board members Mary Carlson and Eric Ankrum were in attendance in the audience.

Along with Johnson, they’ll be sworn into the board at 6 p.m. Jan. 4, during the board’s organizational meeting. Misty Bergman and Nicole Krisak are holdovers on the board, while the new board will need to gauge the availability of board member Alice Kloepfer, who remains out on a prolonged absence due to illness. She’d been replaced by appointment by Johnson prior to his election to the board in November.

Editor’s note: To read more about the Becks and their daughter in the online PineKnotNews.com, visit: https://www.pineknotnews.com/story/2022/04/29/news/theyre-sharing-lillys-hearing-journey/7159.html