Dire need for vote approval

Board would have to cut more than $2.1 million from next year's budget if referendum fails

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

Nov. 28, 2001

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

Bemidji School Superintendent Rollie Morud knows that even if district residents approve the upcoming operating referendum, school officials still will face the difficult task of reducing spending to reflect declining enrollment.

But contemplating what will happen should voters reject the $400 per student referendum leaves him speechless.

"If it passes we'll have to make adjustments," he said. After a long pause he added, "If it fails, I don't even want to think about it because it's so huge. I think it's got to be clear that with a couple million dollars in cuts ... it's just huge."

Morud said Tuesday that district officials estimate the Bemidji School Board will have to cut more than $2.1 million for next year's budget if the referendum fails. And he said he knows that will be difficult, when the board already cut $1.3 million last year. Those cuts included the closing of the Deer Lake Elementary School, cutting 25 full-time staff positions and not purchasing any buses to update the district's fleet.

In other words, last year's painful cuts would look minor in comparison to what could be in store for the district this spring.

Morud declines to go into specifics as to what could or would be on the chopping block with a failed referendum, but he promises nothing would be sacred. Cuts could include school closings, increases in class sizes, reductions in staff and reductions in classroom electives, all of which would affect the district's quality of education.

To put the possibilities into perspective, when the School Board decided to close the Deer Lake Elementary School, it saved more than $300,000. That is just a seventh of what the School Board would have to consider cutting this time around.

"No stone will be unturned," he said. "That's why the referendum is so important to us. There will be reductions in the spring if it passes, and if it doesn't pass, there will be very large reductions."

Morud said for weeks he's been balancing on a tight rope, trying to inform the community of the repercussions of the upcoming vote, while also trying not to threaten them.

In a recent memo to board members, he states, "There is a fine line between sharing the magnitude of the consequences and issuing a threat. I will continue to try to walk that line." But in the same memo, he tells the board he wants the public to understand that the cuts would reduce the quality of the district.

The process of getting the public to help develop a worst-case scenario plan will begin Monday as community members get the opportunity to discuss the issue with the board at its regularly scheduled December meeting.

Also, Morud said, should the vote fail, the district's management team would have to pull together, outline the challenge and begin breaking the task into parts. He said the district would have to go through a process similar to last year's, in which administrators at all three levels -- elementary, middle school and high school -- had to identify what could be cut from their budgets.

"With any gigantic task yo have to divide it into smaller pieces," he said, "but the trouble is that the small pieces in this one are huge."

Morud said he could not identify the dollar figure school officials would have to cut even if the referendum passes.

For the first time, the school district will be using a mail-in ballot that voters should receive sometime after Friday.

Completed ballots must be received at the District Resource Center, or administration office at the old high school, by Dec. 18.

In changing the school funding formula earlier this year, state lawmakers created a system that penalizes districts which don't pass referendums this fall and give incentives to districts that do.