As school ramps up, be ready to help purchase your child's A+ education

After many painful school board meetings last spring in the Cloquet School District, the budget was necessarily slashed, jobs axed and services cut to bare bones.

Only in a few cases, programs such as orchestra were spared and will enrich the lives of students for one more year.

Unfortunately, the budget battle in public education is far from over. Minnesota legislators would largely have you believe they've increased education spending and due to some one-time funding and more money for special education, 2007-2008 itself doesn't look so bleak.

It will be "adequate" to keep the current programs in place, according to Ken Scarbrough, Cloquet Schools superintendent.

"But there will be [money for] nothing else," he added at Tuesday night's board meeting.

And so what? So maybe Cloquet and the rest of Carlton County and schools across the state can squeak by for one more year. Sounds easy enough. Or does it?

It might - until a school needs a new roof, as is the case at Cloquet High School, for example. New roofs don't come cheap. The estimate for a new one at CHS is roughly $680,000.

With the average age of Cloquet Public School facilities over 38 years, most of the buildings will require expensive, extensive maintenance and renovation within the next 10 years, according to the preliminary findings on an infrastructure audit done recently.

"Our buildings are run-down and we'll need over $5 million just to fix the shells of the buildings," Scarbrough said. "We have to fix the shells so we can protect what is inside."

Add in the cost of siding, windows, caulking and plumbing needs in Cloquet and the number hovers at $28 million. Staggering.

Did the weight of all of this cause the most experienced Cloquet School Board member/clerk Shelly Pritchett to resign on July 31?

She had seven years on the board, and fought successfully for two referendums. Did she see the writing on the wall? "Moving those through was hard work," she said. "But it's important for people to understand the big picture. Schools are only as strong as the community who supports them."

Building infrastructure needs are only one area of "other" costs that will inevitably crop up, leaving one to wonder schools can make it without.

"If we want our kids to have an A+ education, chances are we're going to have to do it ourselves in rural communities," Scarbrough said.

Lisa Baumann