County schools

The St. Louis County School District, or ISD 2142, is facing a major financial challenge and teacher reductions may not be the answer to what ails the district. In an era of open enrollment and the increasing reliance by parents and students on online educational alternatives, it is more difficult than ever for districts to cut their way to financial solvency — at least when those cuts focus on the ranks of teachers.
In the St. Louis County Schools, other parts of the budget deserve serious attention from the budget knife. That includes the district’s administration, which consumes a larger percentage of the district’s budget than the statewide average, according to data from the Minnesota Department of Education. The Rock Ridge, Hibbing, and Grand Rapids school districts all spend significantly less as a percentage of their student population than the St. Louis County Schools. Rock Ridge, which serves 2,357 students, spends $3 million on administration, or 6.2 percent of total spending, compared to $3.7 million, or 9.5 percent of total spending, for ISD 2142.
To be fair, the district appears to have made some progress in reducing its administrative costs. Those expenditures, based on a percentage of student population, used to be among the highest in the state. Even with some modest progress, they are still well above the statewide average, which includes of lot of very small districts which can’t help but have relatively high administrative costs when compared to enrollment.
Even so, the district can and should do more to reduce its administrative overhead, since those cuts have the least impact on students. The district can’t simply ask teachers to take on more without asking the same of their administrative staff.
As district officials have discovered, parents get upset when teacher cuts lead to schoolrooms packed with too many students. Now, the district’s possible shift to a four-day week, another attempt to save money, could further exacerbate the concerns of some parents.
The St. Louis County School District is uniquely vulnerable to open enrollment because the most populated portions of the sprawling district lie relatively close to neighboring districts that are eager to scoop up discontented students. And parents and students in the more remote parts of the district, where student bus rides tend to be long, are understandably enticed by online alternatives or home schooling.
At the same time, school districts everywhere can expect their revenue streams to grow more slowly or even shrink in the years ahead. While Minnesota school districts saw some nice funding increases in recent years, those increases are almost certain to slow in the face of a projected state budget shortfall in the years ahead. And efforts to eliminate the federal Department of Education, along with the elimination of funding streams designed to help disadvantaged students, could further erode district finances generally.
What’s more, the district’s historic inability to pass an excess operating levy suggests more revenue from local taxpayers is unlikely. That’s particularly true in the wake of the bad feelings generated by the district’s 2010 restructuring, which closed longstanding community schools. That restructuring, school officials promised at the time, was supposed to address the district’s financial woes.
One supposed solution being touted on social media — the closure of the Tower-Soudan Elementary — is not a solution to the problem. The Tower-Soudan Elementary, for a variety of reasons, receives special revenue streams that the district would likely not receive were the school closed. That includes extra payments-in-lieu-of-taxes, or PILT, stemming from the creation of the Lake Vermilion Soudan Underground Mine State Park. Furthermore, Tower-Soudan Elementary could actually help relieve some of the classroom overcrowding that is currently upsetting many North Woods parents, since Tower-Soudan’s class sizes are appropriately small and could certainly accommodate a few more students. The district certainly has the option of restricting the flow of elementary students from the Tower area to North Woods, which would alleviate crowding there. It’s somewhat of a mystery why parents currently choose to send their elementary-aged children on a long bus ride to North Woods when the educational outcomes at Tower have been so consistently excellent for so many years. Keeping younger Tower-area students closer to home would give them the benefit of the solid educational program at Tower-Soudan Elementary while alleviating classroom crowding at North Woods. It seems like an obvious win-win.