When a person becomes dysfunctional, it often requires an intervention by family members and friends. It’s time for an intervention on Independent School District 2142’s dysfunctional reorganization plan.

There are numerous structural flaws with the district itself and its reorganization plan:

1. Geographic Coherence:

A school district needs to make sense geographically. ISD 2142 is an artificial political construct established four decades ago (as ISD 710) by a top-down decision combining the rural portions of St. Louis County that no urban school district wanted. Its northern and southern portions are divided by the Iron Range and have no natural community bonds. ISD 2142 is larger than several states; the Orr School attendance area, alone, is larger than Rhode Island.

2. Community Needs:

Schools are the glue that hold rural areas together. They are the one inclusive organization, accepting any and all. They are a primary locus of community activity and solidarity. ISD 2142’s plan removes the local school from three viable market towns: Tower, Cook, and Orr. Cook and Orr are the only market towns on Hwy. 53 in the 110 miles between the Iron Range and the Canadian border.

3. Transit Time:

School consolidation has resulted in bus rides of such length and duration that they can be legitimately considered child abuse, especially in northern St. Louis County, the cold pole of the lower 48 states. Minnesota needs a maximum bus transit time law. ISD 2142’s plan would greatly increase transit times, putting some children on 100-mile daily bus rides.

4. Budget:

With the state of Minnesota staring at a $5-plus billion budget deficit, a school district proposing a $115 million (with interest) building project to close a $450,000 annual operating budget gap is insanity. ISD 2142’s plan nearly triples the present school tax levy, ensuring that any future necessary operating levies will have no chance of passage.

5. Pedagogical Practice:

For a century, standard practice has been to bring the child to the school, on ever longer bus rides. New technology is reversing this practice, trending toward bringing the school to the student. ISD 2142’s solution is old technology.

6. Bois Forte:

The conspicuous silence of the Bois Forte Band and the Nett Lake School District on ISD 2142’s reorganization is like Sherlock Holmes’s “dog that didn’t bark.”

The agreement between Nett Lake and the state of Minnesota providing a large subsidy for construction of Nett Lake’s new elementary school were contingent on secondary school facilities provided in Orr, itself. With no school in Orr, Bois Forte is off the hook and can go its own way. Under the Treaty of 1854, the federal government is ultimately responsible for Indian education. Bois Forte is the only community in the district experiencing demographic growth.

7. Open Enrollment:

This is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. ISD 2142 operating budget projections are based on the assumption of no further losses to open enrollment. This is totally unrealistic.

Tower-Soudan is going its own way. Bois Forte could easily follow. The north part of Orr’s attendance area already has buses coming from International Falls and Littlefork. Cook will soon have a four-lane road all the way to Virginia, which will increase the use of the post-secondary option. Crane Lake has the money and availability of retired professionals to put together its own mini-school with help from on-line resources.

8. Conflict of Interest:

There is a serious conflict of interest in hiring a construction company to come up with a school reorganization plan. The design of the buildings maximizes linear runs for the benefit of Johnson Controls’ primary business. The buildings have a high surface area to volume ratio, more appropriate for California than northern Minnesota.

9. Customary Travel Patterns:

An indication of the poor quality of planning in evidence in the ISD 2142 reorganization plan is its assumption that closing the Tower-Soudan secondary school would result in most students switching to the district’s Babbitt-Embarrass school, the most distant of several schools within range of the T-S attendance area.

This completely ignores established travel patterns. Tower-Soudan orients along Hwy 169, toward Ely and Virginia; Babbitt is on a dead end county road. The long-term prognosis for Babbitt was not good from the moment the first foundation was poured. Mining is a one-time harvest. The world is littered with abandoned mining towns on dead end roads. 

10. Property Tax Raid:

ISD 2142’s plan was driven by school board members from the southern part of the district, who have the most to gain from the plan. The southern part does not have enough property tax valuation to support their part of the plan and is dependent on northern property values. This was a raid on the bank and is being carried out against overwhelming opposition from the northern part of the district.

 11. Consolidation Does Not Require New Buildings:

The proposed south region school is only two miles closer to Cotton than the present, modern Albrook School. The proposed north region school is only five miles north of Cook. Considering how much farther Orr students would have to travel, the extra five miles to Cook is irrelevant. The present Cook School is larger than the proposed new school, has a greater variety of facilites available, and can easily hold Orr students too. If consolidation is essential, at least save one town from decline.

Fred Schumacher is a resident of Greaney. He is also the former Orr-Cook Editor of the Timberjay.