Raptors officials meet, get along

Outside the Wrenshall school library on Wednesday, football players from the Carlton/Wrenshall Raptors cooperative team could be seen running through their practice paces.

Inside the library, the football coach and Raptors athletic director Brent Pokornowski joined officials from both districts for a meeting about the sports cooperative.

In doing so, officials from the districts were meeting for the first time since a series of setbacks in the ongoing effort to consolidate the districts. In one of the most recent setbacks, Carlton sought to dissolve the Raptors cooperative committee, which Wrenshall successfully sided against, leading to Wednesday’s meeting.

And while consolidation wasn’t on the agenda, it was the big topic at the backdrop of the meeting, and Pokornowski seemed to realize it.

“The purpose of this is building trust and transparency,” he said. “That’s the big purpose for this — to get to where we want to be going.”

The districts haven’t officially communicated throughout the summer, employing a cooling off period after the sides failed to reconcile on topics such as how long-term administrative contracts fit into a combined future together.

Wrenshall doesn’t want pre-existing contracts to get in the way of decision making by what would be a new, combined school board, while Carlton officials have advocated for leadership to be in place to help manage a transition into one district.

That particular topic was one for another day. This time, they mostly dealt with sports-related minutiae:

• What if volunteer game workers wanted to donate their game day stipend to the athletic programs? It appears possible, was the consensus.

• What’s the difference between equipment and supplies? Equipment is something like a volleyball net that would be paid for by the school installing it; supplies are the volleyballs needed at the start of every season that would be built into the sport’s budget. The districts share budgets for the sports evenly.

• How often should the Raptors cooperative committee meet? As needed, but likely twice annually, following the fall and winter sports seasons.

Including Pokornowski, nine members of the two schools were in attendance: Wrenshall school board members Mary Carlson, Ben Johnson and Nicole Krisak, and Carlton board members Sam Ojibway, Laura Nilson and Eryn Szymczak, along with Carlton superintendent Donita Stepan and Carlton business manager Angela Lind.

The meeting got off to a rocky start, with some accusations about a difficult-to-access agenda attachment. Sniping ensued, but Szymczak intervened with a, “Can we just stop,” which seemed to reset the focus.

So far, the extracurriculars cooperative is the one thing the two districts have effectively launched together. It is now in its second full season of sports being played together.

What’s new this year is that both boards agreed Carlton would be the sole administrative host of the Raptors cooperative, in charge of paying the bills and employing the activities director in Pokornowski.

One question that was answered at the meeting: Could Carlton’s business office produce seasonal budgetary snapshots of how a sport performs in terms of ticket sales versus game expenses? Carlton’s Lind said she could and will begin doing so at the end of each sports season.

“If the roles were reversed, I would expect Wrenshall to send me something,” Nilson said.

Other ideas were floated, including drumming up support for the programs by starting a Raptors booster club.

“I love that idea,” Pokornowski said.

Currently, Wrenshall has a booster club and Carlton does not.

The Raptors cooperative committee proceeded to comb through the language of the 11-page cooperative agreement. Originally approved by both boards in 2023, the agreement was being updated to reflect the new arrangement to have one site host the cooperative.

If anybody, Pokornowski appreciated the cooperation being exhibited in firming up the arrangement between the schools.

“I’m boots on the ground,” Pokornowski said. “I’m the one who is living it.”