Communication gap at heart of stalled talks

A summer’s worth of cooling off between sides in the proposed consolidation between the Carlton and Wrenshall school districts is coming to a close without any sense of how the districts expect to proceed.

Both sides say they’re waiting to hear from the other.

Neither side appears prepared to nudge talks forward.

A clearer picture of the division began to appear following recent Pine Knot interviews, data requests and school board meetings.

In short, Carlton wants consolidation to run through superintendents and Wrenshall does not, preferring its elected board members to marshal the process.

“That has been our biggest frustration,” Carlton superintendent Donita Stepan said. “We want consolidation. We want cooperation. We think this should be easy. We just don’t know who to work with.”

Stepan added that if there was an administrative point person, “we could be done with this consolidation tomorrow.”

But Wrenshall’s most recent business maneuvers are in contrast to Stepan’s understanding of the process.

At its board meeting Aug. 12, Wrenshall voted unanimously on a set of superintendent priorities which do not include consolidation or oversight of the Raptors sports and activities cooperative between the schools.

“His priority is the students and the staff within the district. Therefore, he will not be involved in any consolidation talks, and that is a directive from this board,” Wrenshall board chairwoman Mary Carlson said at the meeting.

Jeff Pesta is entering his second year as part-time superintendent for the district. He’s helped stabilize its finances after a $300,000-plus budget shortfall and the board wants his focus to remain on finances, academics, and students and staff within the district.

“This board knows it’s our job to carry some of that, since we’ve opted into a part-time superintendent,” Carlson said, adding that community members have reminded the board that past consolidation efforts have hamstrug the district by “abandoning” day-to-day business in favor of energies going into consolidation.

State law allows boards to engage in higher level-functions, even stating, “The board must superintend and manage the schools of the district.”

That’s not how Carlton sees it.

“It’s not the role of the school board to get into the details of those kinds of things,” Stepan said.

When asked whom Carlton ought to be dealing with on the topic of consolidation, Carlson was clear.

“Carlton would be working with Wrenshall’s school board,” she said. “We discussed both consolidation and the co-op, and unanimously agreed that our board will handle those.”

A recent email exchange between the districts seemed to illustrate the depth of the d ivide.

The interaction was related to the Raptors sports and activities cooperative.

In July, the Wrenshall board approved administrative hosting duties for the Raptors cooperative to reside in Carlton. What it meant was there would no longer be two athletic directors. Both sides agreed that one host would streamline the process and eliminate some of the confusion that resulted during the first year of the co-op in 2023-24.

“Jeff did a lot more work than he was paid to do last year,” Wrenshall board member Nicole Krisak said, with board members agreeing that Pesta was particularly consumed by the Raptors cooperative.

Removing his co-op duties meant, “I think our focus is where it needs to be,” Krisak said.

Carlton seemed pleased to bring the Raptors cooperative in house, assigning it to athletic director Brent Pokornowski.

“We thought we were doing them a favor,” Stepan said. “They didn’t have the administrative power to be able to do it, so they asked us.”

Shortly after that unfolded, Carlson, Carlton board member Laura Nilson and Pokornowski convened on the phone, and Carlson followed up with an email to officials with both schools. Using a data practices request, Pine Knot received the email chain that resulted.

“Brent, Laura and I met on the phone yesterday at Brent’s request,” Carlson wrote Aug. 7. “It was great hearing about some of the plans for the year. During that meeting, I was informed that the … co-op committee was dissolved following the last approval of the [governing] document.”

The signed cooperative agreement between the districts includes language creating a committee with members from both districts. The committee was expected to review changes to budgets and meet as needed.

The dissolution of the committee caught Wrenshall officials off guard. Once administrative hosting duties for the cooperative were moved to Carlton, Wrenshall officials believed the committee was its way to stay connected and communicate. Stepan said once Carlton was made host, officials there saw no reason for furthering the committee approach.

A subsequent email from Carlton board chair Julianne Emerson also caught Wrenshall off balance.

“I am very disappointed by this email,” Emerson wrote in response to Carlson on Aug. 7. “The ‘meeting’ between you, Brent, and Laura, to which you refer, was not sanctioned, was inappropriate and does not follow proper protocol. One person cannot and does not speak for either of the school boards. That is not how they are meant to function.”

Emerson did not respond to an attempt to reach her for comment.

The exchange left Carlson and Wrenshall to wonder how it ought to communicate with Carlton. This wasn’t the first time Carlton has expressed discontent with how Wrenshall has communicated. Both districts sought an end to the early consolidation committee meetings between members of each board and district, deeming those discussions unproductive.

Also, early in the move toward building a sports cooperative, Carlton bristled when it received a letter from a Wrenshall board member that was not signed by the board chair or superintendent. The Wrenshall board had assigned the job of writing the letter to a board member, which explained the lone signature. A cooling-off attempt to communicate via postal letter has also been abandoned by the districts. Carlson said the last time they sent a letter through the mail, it was responded to via email.

“I genuinely need to know how I can communicate with them,” Carlson said. “We have to communicate. I need a clear set of rules, but I don’t have that and they won’t give it to me.”

For Carlton’s part, the current gulf between the districts is “fundamental.”

“There’s a fundamental difference between how the school boards function at Carlton and Wrenshall,” Stepan said. “The superintendent should be the one getting that information, not school board members.”

She concluded, “I think that’s why it’s been difficult. If the superintendent doesn’t have anything to do with consolidation or the cooperative, who are we working with?”

For Wrenshall, the answer is readily apparent. It’s the board and through its chair, Carlson. And decidedly not through the superintendent.

Pesta noted the Raptors cooperative during a recent conversation.

“We’re going to support Brent and try not to get in his way, so the kids have a good experience this fall,” Pesta said.

He called the communication gulf between both districts “bewildering.”

“There doesn’t seem to be a lot of trust,” Pesta said, before saying of the Wrenshall board, “They’ve been sincere in how they communicate.”

Emerson noted in her Aug. 7 email that the Raptors cooperative committee “was officially disbanded,” but Stepan left a door open for further Raptors committee meetings.

“I didn’t know this was such an issue … until I watched their Aug. 1 work session,” Stepan said. “No one from Wrenshall reached out to me. But if the co-op committee wanted to meet again, we probably would. I would just need to confirm that with my board.”