What’s next for South Washington County Schools after $462M failed bond referendum?

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
·7 min read

St. Louis Park Public Schools got good news on Tuesday when voters overwhelmingly approved a capital project levy renewal of $3.5 million for 10 years and a $135 million building bond.

In the Le Sueur-Henderson school district in southern Minnesota, voters looked favorably on a $39.9 million bond request for a pre-K through 5th grade elementary addition, but turned down the district’s requests for a $6 million middle and high school upgrade and a $5.5 million Career and Technical Education addition, swimming pool and renovations.

So what went wrong in South Washington County?

The school district’s $462 million bond request — the biggest ask ever in Minnesota — was rejected by a vote of 14,834 to 7,782.

“Anytime you go for a bond, it doesn’t matter if it’s a small bond or the biggest one ever, you have to balance what the needs of the students are with what you think the community can afford,” said Greg Abbott, a spokesman for the Minnesota School Boards Association. “It’s a real tightrope to walk, and sometimes you don’t really know until you ask.”

NEW HOMES BEING BUILT IN DISTRICT

Nine school districts in the state passed referenda on Tuesday; eight districts had failed ones, Abbott said.

Abbott said he expects the South Washington County school district, which spans parts or all of Cottage Grove, Newport, St. Paul Park, Woodbury, Afton, Denmark Township and Grey Cloud Island Township, to return to voters next year with a “trimmed-down” bond request or one that is divided into a series of questions.

“They asked, and now they know,” Abbott said. “They can come back with something that might be a little more palatable and would pass. The needs of the students don’t go away.”

Had the bond been approved, district officials said it would have provided critical funding for new construction, renovations and improvements to address student growth.

Over the next 10 years, 8,000 new homes and more than 3,500 potential new K-12 students are expected to move into the district.

“In a growing school district like ours, the only way that we could ever have enough funds to build schools and remodel schools is through the passage of a bond,” Superintendent Julie Nielsen said Thursday. “That requires bringing our community along with us and having them see the need within our school district.”

OPPORTUNITY TO LOOK AT ‘WHAT WE NEED TO DO DIFFERENTLY’

Nielsen said she and other district officials were still processing the news of the loss on Thursday morning.

“As a school team, when you work as hard as we did to put the information out to include others, there is certainly a level of disappointment,” she said.

But she said Tuesday’s vote also presents an opportunity for district leaders “to take a look at what we need to do differently as we think about schools and how we can present the needs and share the needs across our system.”

South Washington County Schools is Washington County’s largest employer with 3,500 employees. The district has 18,700 students.

In 2015, voters in the district approved construction funding for a new middle school, which opened as Oltman Middle School in Cottage Grove in 2018, but rejected plans for improvements to the high schools and several elementary schools.

“The need from 2015 has not gone away,” Nielsen said. “And in addition to those needs, we have the additional growth as a school district.”

The district’s long-range facility planning process was put on hold because of the pandemic and restarted in March 2021, she said.

Although some criticized the district for “rushing” to bring the referendum to a vote, Nielsen said district officials have been working on it for years.

“This has not just been the last year, it hasn’t been just two years, this has been occurring over multiple years,” said Nielsen, who became superintendent in August 2020 after six years as assistant superintendent. “One of the challenges we have is: How do we engage people in the process before we get to the final decisions? That’s going to take everybody because gathering feedback and input leads to options and results, and we need to make sure that we bring the community, our staff, our families along with us through that process.”

SCHOOLS STRETCHED TO CAPACITY

The tax impact of the referendum would have been an additional $25 in property taxes a month, or $305 more a year, for the owner of a home worth $300,000, the average home price in the district, school district officials said.

In November 2019, voters in the White Bear Lake school district approved a $329 million bond referendum to fund construction projects across the district, making it the largest successful school bond referendum in state history.

Nielsen said, however, that it is important to note that the White Bear Lake district has about 8,700 students, fewer than half of the students in the South Washington County district.

“I think that, yes, while it would have been the largest bond in the state of Minnesota, you need to dig a little bit deeper to understand the context of the ask and where we were historically as a district and what those asks included,” she said.

For example, $23 million of the district’s $462 million ask on Tuesday was for the purchase of land — not for buildings. “We know that land prices will continue to go up,” she said.

Eight schools in the district are already at or over 95 percent capacity with East Ridge High School in Woodbury at 121 percent capacity, Nielsen said.

“We know that within the short term, within the next year, we will need to address those issues all while we continue to gather input, to listen to our community, our staff, our students, our families and our city officials,” she said. “We will continue working on that process, but, in the meantime, we are going to have to address those immediate concerns of overcapacity at those eight schools. … We’re going to have to make some decisions about the impact of enrollment on those particular locations and what our next steps will be for the fall of 2023.”

NEXT STEPS TO BE DETERMINED

The district also came under fire because the plan called for the closure of Newport Elementary School, the most diverse school in the district. Under the plan, Newport Elementary would have become an early-learning center.

Nielsen declined to comment on the school’s fate.

“The focus is not on Newport,” she said. “Newport is not a location that is over capacity. Those conversations and feedback will be gathered throughout the next month. Right now, our focus is not on Newport. Our focus is on those schools that are over capacity.”

Prior to Tuesday’s vote, district officials said that if the bond measure failed, the district’s 10-year facility plan would be modified, but not dismantled. With some schools over capacity, there would likely be extensive boundary changes prior to 2025 and higher-than-average class sizes, district officials said at the time.

Other options on the table if the proposal failed, they said, were: exploring temporary portable trailers at some school sites; considering alternative scheduling options for high schools; reviewing grade configurations at all levels; increasing rental space and costs for learning and instruction; and returning to voters with a new bond proposal in February.

But Nielsen said Thursday that it was too soon to say whether those measures would be pursued and under what time frame.

“Part of our work going forward will be to spend time listening and gathering that feedback knowing that we will do our best to create a new plan and look at and consider other options,” she said. “But in a district of 18,700 students, it’s going to be difficult to come up with one plan that every single person believes is best for them.”

Related Articles