At a public hearing, about a dozen people testified against ISD 2142’s plan to close the Orr School when the current school year ends, disputing claims that it will save nearly $400,000 and improve education by combining students at the Cook School.

Steve Rutzick, the St. Paul attorney who presided over the April 14 hearing, is expected to have his report ready for the district by May 9. However, the district is free to disregard any recommendations made by Rutzick.

Several said the district had already decided the school’s fate when the school board voted 4-3 on Jan. 31 to combine the Cook and Orr schools at the Cook School. State statute requires that a public hearing be held prior to closing a public school, but board members, who supported the action, contend that they did not violate the law.

State Rep. David Dill, DFL-Crane Lake, differed with that claim. “It is embarrassing as a public official to see a public hearing two months after the decision was made,” he said.

Judy Koch, of Orr, also said the board had acted improperly. She noted in her testimony that citizens had been assured a public hearing must be held before any decision was made on the Orr School.

“I and many others believe the students and public have been betrayed,” Koch testified.

District’s case

The hearing opened with about an hour-long presentation by the district on the reasons it had proposed the closure of the Orr School.

The school had been scheduled to close at the end of the current school year and students from both Cook and Orr were to move into a new school building in the fall of 2011. But unforeseen delays had scuttled that plan, officials said, and with the district expecting a deficit at the end of the current year, it had to manage its dollars carefully.

On the financial side, district Business Manager Kim Johnson said closing the school would produce nearly $400,000 in savings, with the majority coming from staff reductions. All told, staff reductions would save the district about $297,394.

Johnson added that the district would save an additional $122,608 in operations and maintenance costs for the Orr School, which would be “mothballed.”

The savings would be offset partially by additional transportation costs, including $20,355 for fuel and $79,187 for additional bus and van drivers. The savings estimate, prepared in January, did not include any adjustments reflecting the higher cost of fuel today.

Declining enrollment was also cited by Johnson in making a case for closing the Orr School. Most state funding is tied to enrollment, she said, so the loss of students means the loss of aid. Enrollment projections were lower than originally anticipated, she said, with the current forecast predicting an enrollment of 1,815 K-12 students districtwide at the start of the 2011-12 school year.

Johnson said reducing costs is vital. The district is projecting that its unreserved, undesignated fund, used to pay operating costs, will fall from $3.5 million to $1.9 million at the end of the current school year. That amounts to less than one month’s operating costs, she said. The Minnesota School Board Association’s best practices recommend that districts maintain fund balances equal to 1.5 to two months’ operating expenses. In ISD 2142’s case, that would equate to $31. to $4.1 million.

Superintendent Charles Rick spoke about the educational benefits, citing no need for interactive television for language classes. He also said the additional students housed in one building would provide opportunities for more electives in math, music and other subjects, and make teachers, who teach at more than one site, more accessible to students.

Rick also said the addition of Orr students to Cook might enable the district to restore Title I funding to the Cook School and benefit students from both schools.

DaNeil Sirjord, who oversees federal projects for the district, later told the Timberjay that it is “very, very likely” that North Woods (the name for the combined Cook-Orr School) will qualify for Title I funding but she has nothing official yet. She expects to get the official word within a month.

Another factor was space. Orr School does not have enough room to accommodate students from both schools, but the Cook School does, according to school officials, who said the building’s square footage per student is more than the 190 square feet set as a parameter for the new school.

School officials also touted the benefits of integrating more nonwhite students in Cook. Cook’s nonwhite population is about nine percent, while Orr’s is 54 percent.

Throughout their testimony, school officials were guided with questions by attorney Steve Knutson. The district used a PowerPoint presentation but audience members had difficulty seeing the small writing used in the exhibits even when projected on a screen.

Marshall Helmberger asked if the hearing could be kept open for a week to accept written testimony after people had a chance to examine the exhibits.

Rutzick agreed to have documents available for public review, but said the record would be closed at the end of the hearing.

“So we can look at them after the fact, and if they’re inaccurate, there’s nothing we can do about it?” asked Helmberger.

“Correct,” said Rutzick, drawing moans and laughter from the audience.

Mike Friend, who testified at the hearing, confronted Rutzick after the meeting and asked why he couldn’t keep the meeting open a few more days.

“He told me he couldn’t by statute,” Friend said. “When I asked him what statute, he said, ‘My statute.’ He didn’t want to hear from us at all. He was there for pacification.”

Public testimony

Public members offering their testimony were kept to a three-minute limit, a restriction that drew criticism from several who spoke. Several submitted their written remarks so their full testimony could be reviewed.

Rutzick said after the hearing that he imposed the restriction and customarily sets a time limit on comments. He added that he would review all the written materials submitted to him on April 14 as well as the oral testimony provided at the hearing.

During their testimony, several questioned the savings and educational benefits used by the district to justify the school’s closure.

Dennis Peterson of Gheen, said closing the Orr School would result in less than half of the $400,000 savings claimed by the district. In addition, he said, the district has not calculated any loss of students as a result of closing the school.

“This is ridiculous,” said Peterson. “Assuming just a loss of 50 students loses $500,000 in revenue; closing the Orr School will result in a net loss of $300,000 not a savings of $400,000.”

Helmberger pointed out in testimony at the AlBrook public hearing, Johnson had expressed confidence that the restructuring would produce a $1 million surplus. If that is true, he said, how could the district plead financial hardship unless it closed the Orr School.

Nels Gabrielson said his three children and other Orr students were re-enrolled in the Cook School earlier this year without the consent of their parents or guardians. “I want everyone to think about the time, money, educational and supervisory impact this has had on our kids this year already,” he said, noting that the costs for that process were not tallied by the district.

As for the educational benefits, Gabrielson said the district offered a wider range of class offerings that ultimately was “whittled down” to fewer classes due to lack of space, time, money and available teaching staff.

Others addressed the economic effects that closing the Orr School would have in the community.

Orr City Clerk Louise Redmond said the impact is going to be “astronomical” in a small town such as Orr. If the school goes, so will the people, she predicted, and it could result in a net enrollment loss for ISD 2142.

Anne Sather said that transferring her students, all involved in extracurricular activities, to Cook would create a hardship for her. “I live 20 miles north of Orr,” she said. “Now I’m going to have to go an additional 16 miles south of Orr. If they didn’t combine the schools, I would be able to pick up my kids at Orr” even if the sports were combined.

Several also criticized the plan’s treatment of Native American students, who would have to travel a much further distance to classes.

Friend said closing Orr and forcing students to travel further for classes was discriminatory to Native Americans.

Veronica Holman said she had heard a story from one man about how the state had taken Indian students to boarding schools against their parents’ wishes in the past and compared that to the present situation.

Holman also pointed out that Cotton students would remain in their school until the South Ridge School was ready to accept students. “The same courtesy should be extended to Orr,” said Holman.

School officials had said that provision was included because neither AlBrook nor Cotton is large enough to accommodate both student populations.

Flawed plan

Others keyed their remarks to the district’s restructuring plan, which they described as flawed.

Gheen resident Fred Schumacher said the district’s plan to consolidate students in fewer schools moves them away from population centers. He noted that the Indian gaming industry has become an economic powerhouse and the jobs it has created have brought back young adults of child-bearing age.

Instead of taking that into calculation, the district is closing schools in Orr, Tower and AlBrook and moving away from its only areas of demographic growth potential. “The district placed the two new regional schools in rural locations that are located in demographic vacuums,” he concluded.

Schumacher also defended small schools as a plus for education.

“Small schools like Orr can do a surprisingly good job of teaching students,” Schumacher said, noting that the student population fits within Dunbar’s Number. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar posited that there is a limit to the number of stable social relationships an individual can maintain, and that upper limit is 150 for humans.

“In the Orr School, there were multiple, redundant tracking systems…to ensure that a student did not get ‘lost.’ As the school year was coming to an end, Orr’s administration knew long ahead of time who would graduate and who would not,” stated Schumacher. “By closing the Orr School and merging with Cook, that sense of closeness and intimacy will be lost.”

Pete Glowaski and Keith Aho both cited surveys that showed residents in the Cook and Orr attendance areas favored renovation of existing schools over a new school. A recent survey of Linden Grove Township residents yielded the same results with renovating existing schools as the top choice.

Official record

The evening’s most bizarre moment came when Helmberger handed Rutzick a copy of the district’s official board minutes from Feb. 14, 2011, which showed that the original Jan. 31 motion to close the Orr School had been subsequently rescinded by a 4-3 board vote. Those same Feb. 14 minutes also indicated that a motion to delay the closure of the Orr School until 2012 was approved, again 4-3. Helmberger questioned school administrators’ authority to close the Orr School, based on the district’s official minutes.

Caught off guard, school officials huddled later with their attorney for about 20 minutes, then reopened the hearing with two new witnesses. Board members Chet Larson and Bob Larson both testified that the minutes were apparently in error. When asked if they had approved the minutes, attorney Knutson said the board was not going to answer that question.

The last to speak at the hearing was state Rep. Dill, who expressed disappointment with the board’s familiar 4-3 split on a variety of issues involving the restructuring and said it reminded him of partisan politics at the Legislature.

After the hearing, Dill said he had doubts about the district’s restructuring plan for the northern half of the district.

“In the north, I don’t know that the plan strengthens the school district,” he concluded, “but I do know that it weakens communities.”