Board aims to keep door open

Wrenshall school board members got their first look at Carlton’s response to their recent consolidation overture during Tuesday’s work session meeting. While Carlton’s response was by unanimous school board vote, it wasn’t enthusiastic.

In her letter, Carlton superintendent Donita Stepan put conditions on any new discussions: that both boards agree one site is the only option for a consolidated school district and the site should be at Carlton’s South Terrace Elementary School.

“If the Wrenshall School Board can affirm their belief in both of those points, then the Carlton School Board would consider opening discussion with the Wrenshall School Board,” Stepan wrote. The Carlton Board doesn’t want to invest any more time in talks “without new substantive information,” she added.

After sharing copies of both letters, Wrenshall superintendent Jeff Pesta encouraged his board to take a breath, process the Carlton letter together and strive for a “win-win” scenario versus a tug of war between the two districts.

“This letter is kind of set up as a ‘we want to win and you’re gonna have to lose and we’d be happy to meet about the terms of your surrender,’” Pesta said.

He suggested the Wrenshall board “take the high road” and find a way to start discussions with Carlton looking at all the options. The Wrenshall response might be to recommend consideration of investments and value of all three buildings (the K-12 school at Wrenshall and elementary and high schools in Carlton), he said.

“And within that group of options, there might be an option where someday it is down to one site and it might be South Terrace. We’re not excluding that,” he said.

“We both need to understand what our campuses are like and that there is probably going to be a transition … you don’t go from three to one at 100 miles per hour,” he added during the lengthy discussion.

Board member Mary Carlson pointed out that close to 80 percent of respondents in the combined community survey of Carlton and Wrenshall supported the two boards exploring consolidation.

As Tuesday’s meeting was a work session, board members didn’t vote, but agreed that Pesta should write a first draft of a letter which the board would work on at its next meeting on Sept. 11. The board and superintendent covered a wide range of topics during the roughly two-hour work session.