A contingent of community representatives, including the mayors of Cook, Tower, and Orr, traveled to St. Paul on Wednesday, Feb. 24 to meet with the state auditor, an attorney, and the Iron Range legislative delegation.

It was an interesting day, and it helped the communities further refine our strategy in hopes of convincing the St. Louis County School Board to consider changes in its restructuring plan as it pertains to the three communities.

The meeting with State Auditor Rebecca Otto and staff went very well. We felt that the three investigators fully understood our concerns about the misinformation used to promote a yes vote in the Dec. 8 referendum, and we are confident that they will seriously investigate the issues we raised. When that will happen is anyone’s guess, however, since we received no firm timeline on when that investigation might be completed. The auditor confirmed what we already knew, which is that her office has no authority to overturn the election, and at this point, that is not our objective.

Meeting with the attorney

The group also met with attorney Erick Kaardal, of Mohrman and Kaardal, which was very enlightening. While our group is not seeking to overturn the election, we did agree on an actionable course in hopes of getting some accountability for what happened here. We will likely be pursuing a criminal complaint under the state’s Fair Campaign Practices law.

The point isn’t really to send board members to jail, but to get them to recognize what they did. To date, our concerns about the campaign of misinformation have been utterly ignored. We have raised specific issues and have asked them to give specific responses, and we get lectured for not supporting education.

In fact, most of the people involved with our group are very supportive of education, and many of us worked on Vote Yes efforts in the past. This isn’t about a lack of commitment to education, it’s about a bad plan and a campaign of misinformation that was used to sell it.

One advantage of filing the action we’re considering is that the costs are relatively modest, in part because violations are handled by the Office of Administrative Hearings, rather than in a district court. Our attorney has agreed to handle the entire action, which will include a comprehensive data practices request for information from the district, for a lump sum of $7,500. That will also include a separate filing with the OAH arguing that the district needs to account for the money it spent in support of the vote yes effort.

I know some residents are wondering about a possible challenge to the election, because of possible fraud. While the attorney said we may well have a valid case, pursuing it would be prohibitively expensive, including $60,000-$100,000 in legal fees and the likelihood that we would need to post bond totaling millions of dollars. It would also be a lengthy and destructive fight, and in the end, far too many such court battles end up with both sides essentially losing.

At this point, we feel we need to stay focused on demanding accountability for the wrongdoing that took place, while continuing our political efforts to obtain funding for a feasibility study to explore ways to maintain quality education in the three existing schools in Orr, Cook, and Tower. As part of that, we want to study the possibility of dividing the district.

Meeting with legislators

We were also pleased with our evening meeting with legislators. They were extremely gracious in giving us more than an hour of their time, and they had lots of questions and good suggestions. While a legislative push to slow things down in the north appears unlikely (their first attempt was shot down), the legislators now have a much clearer idea of our objectives.

Apparently, some supporters of the district’s plan have been emailing legislators, and many are falsely claiming we are trying to overturn the vote. We were able to assure legislators we are simply looking for a second opinion on the use of funds in the three northern communities most damaged by this plan.

We have no intention of challenging the use of the funds in the south or in Babbitt. District officials are well aware of this, since we’ve stated as much in recent meetings and in emails.

In the end, it was a very long day (we got home after 1:00 a.m.), but we felt it was very productive. We learned a lot and now have a better sense of how to move forward towards achieving our goals of maintaining quality community schools in Cook, Orr, and Tower-Soudan.

It’s been a lot of work to be sure, but we think our communities are worth it.