School levy likely to be on ballot in Duluth

Voters in Duluth probably can expect to see a request for a new school operating levy on the ballot in November.

Superintendent Bill Gronseth told members of the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday that he would recommend the Duluth School Board seek at least to renew the current operating levy currently set to expire in 2014. He said it remains to be determined whether the district will ask for an enlarged sum.

If the district were simply to let the levy expire, local schools would face about $4.5 million in cuts next year, Gronseth said.

For guidance on the levy, Gronseth said he will rely heavily on the results of an ongoing series of communitywide meetings dubbed the "Think Kids" initiative. Gronseth and his staff have been taking the question of "who we are and where we want to go" to the public, asking people to identify both short-term and long-range goals for the school district.

"Our hope is that we'll have a common vision coming out of this that everyone in our community can come around and believe in," said Ron Lake, the school district's climate coordinator.

The district has held 45 to 50 "Think Kids" vision sessions so far, involving more than 1,000 people, Lake said. He said the district has received additional input from about 250 people who have shared their thoughts online through a school web site.

The feedback will be compiled and analyzed to find common themes, with the results expected in April.

Gronseth said he will weigh those findings before making a recommendation to the School Board about how best to proceed on the issue of the operating levy. He expects to offer that guidance in May.

The School Board then will have until late June or early July to settle on a course of action for the November election.

Gronseth said the school district's current operating levy averages out to $365.60 per student, whereas most districts levy somewhere around $1,000. "We're definitely in the bottom one-third," he said.

Regardless of what happens with the district's operating levy next year, Gronseth also described the challenge of dealing with a $3.5 million shortfall in the existing year's budget.

"As our enrollment declines and state funding stays relatively flat and expenses go up, it causes a deficit," he said.

Gronseth said the district's long-range facilities plan has helped the district cut costs by reducing the number of schools it operates, but that hasn't been enough to offset the same troublesome trends that have led to shortfalls in districts across the state.

"It's a function of the state budget," he said.

Gronseth said the district has been combing through its budget piece by piece in search of savings.

"We're trying to find nickels and dimes anywhere we can to keep the deficit away from the classroom as much as we can. We've found some things that can be reduced, but we haven't quite got to $3.5 million yet."

While Gronseth supports Gov. Mark Dayton's proposal to increase the funding formula for schools by $50 per student, he said that alone would not solve the district's financial woes.

Bill Hanson, the district's business services director, said the formula change would generate an additional $394,000 per year in funding for Duluth schools.