I have tried to respond on this twice before but for some reason it doesn’t show up. I will try one last time.

Private schools and home schooled children should not be included in the open enrollment figure. These students do not take their funding with them to the private schools. The funds that are received from the state (and all funding sources)stay with the public school district. This is a double bonus for the public schools. All of the funding with a tiny percentage of the expense. (The school district supplies a few minor services for the private schools.)

Holy Trinity has around 150 students, St. James has about 50. I have no idea how many are home schooled in the district.

HLWW is very fortunate to have private schools absorbing the expense for all of those children. Imagine the shape we would be in if we had to educate all of them also.

As to school quality issues, my family and I have been pleased with the quality of the teachers AND the quality of the facilities (with perhaps one exception–the lack of adequate theater/auditorium seating). I was recently at a the HLWW elementary school in Winsted to see the 4th-5th grade play. A platform was erected and used for the performers and seating was very limited. I would be more than willing to support a levy to punch through one wall of the gym and add a proper stage (something with clear one-time costs and no ambiguity as to where the funding will go), but am less comfortable with voting in favor of a levy to imrpove general funding levels.

That said, I do think were are on the brink of a ciris here, but not because of the possibility that the current levey proposal will not be approved. Home values are dropping for the first time. Previously, home values have either held their ground through tough times or have managed to increase. You can be sure that homeowners will appeal their taxable basis for property taxes, and that will reduce overall tax revenue. If the drop in housing prices continues for another year or two, many school districts may find their presumed funding levels even lower. This may force them to ask for even more special funding measures. We don’t want to end up like the Chicago area, where property taxes on a modest two or three bedroom home can be $6,000 per year, even if you go almost two hours out of the city. A continued decline in housing values will force governments to collect more taxes per parcel to offst the losses due to decreased property values.

Like many families in a financial press, we need to decide, as a community, what our priorities are in our schools and communities and then we need to make some tough decisions. Will we need to cut some things that are popular and desireable? Probably, but I would rather cut the nice things that we want to have than those things that we really need.

If you ask any of the administration you would find out that the building was intentionally built to be able to add on a middle school some day if they wanted on the north end where the parking lot is. They would only need to add on classroom space since they would share administration offices, lunch room etc. so not a lot of room would be needed.

To “For the Teachers”, if the teachers are doing such a great job, then why are over 200 kids open-enrolling out of the district, with many attending Watertown-Mayer and Dassel-Cokato? How much money is the district losing to open enrollment, isn’t it like a million dollars a year?

It is not just because of “too few opportunities” for the students, it is also because of the way that the teachers perform their jobs, and the condition of the buildings. Just because the district built a new school doesn’t really mean those kids are going to come back.

The district should be proud of itself no doubt for building the new school, which is not an easy feat for any district. But what got built, isn’t it a 500 student school? There is some room for more students but say one day the district needs to add on to the building and they really don’t have all that much room to do so. To the north of the building, you have your bus garage, to the south, your have part of the parking lot, to the west you have county road 6, and finally to the east you have the football and sports complex. Unless they want to squeeze the addition up against it…

And like Deb said, with gas and fuel prices being out of this world, people who do commute to the metro and other longer drives will not want to put up with that, some will move and take their kids and their student’s enrollment money for the district away too…