Superintendent says W-H-A district will face another bond referendum

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.

May 11, 1999

By Devlyn Brooks

Walker-Hackensack-Akeley School District residents will eventually face another bond referendum, according to Superintendent Boyd McLarty, because the district's problems still remain.

"We will have to try another referendum," McLarty said Monday in a phone interview, "because the very same reasons we tried to pass the first referendum still exist."

In results released Friday by the W-H-A School Board, 67 percent voted against the improvements to district facilities in Akeley and Walker, while 33 percent favored it. There were 1,662 "no" votes cast, and 825 votes favoring the plan.

A second question asking district residents to approve building a swimming pool failed by an even wider margin of 71 percent opposed.

The referendum called for $23.8 million to build and upgrade school facilities, and the other question asked for $1.9 million to build the swimming pool.

McLarty said that he has not had a chance to meet with either the W-H-A School Board or the district's long-range planning committee, which ultimately proposed the plans for the failed referendum.

So, as soon as they can meet, he said they will have to discuss what is best for the district's future, which will probably include another referendum.

"We still don't have enough space for the students, and some of our facilities we are using are outdated," he said. "The are outdated, inappropriate and not enough

"Of the people who voted 'no,' we need to find out why they did," he continued, "and if we changed the plans if they would vote 'yes.'"

McLarty said if the board decides not to significantly alter the referendum, they will have to wait 180 days before they can have district residents vote again. But, he said, if the board significantly changes the referendum, they could put it to a vote sooner.

The original referendum called for tearing down the four oldest parts of the Akeley school building, and using the two newest for the district's alternative learning center.

The fourth- through sixth-grade students currently attending the Akeley school would be moved to the district's high school in Walker, which would be remodeled. Being the high school is attached to the elementary school, the district's kindergarten through sixth grade students would have all been in the same facility.

The final step would have been building a new high school building in Walker.

McLarty said he thought a number of factors played a part in the defeat of the referendum.

First, the district is comprised of many residents who own lakeshore property and homesteaded property; so they do not have an intimate connection with the school district. Therefore, they aren't as inclined to see the need for new school facilities.

And second, the diversity of the four communities comprising the district -- Walker, Hackensack, Akeley and Onigum -- makes harmonious decisions unlikely.

"We were concerted (about all of the communities), and we tried to deal with all of them the best we could," he said. "But most of the people agreed before this vote there's a need. The concern was (the amount of) money."

He added that he did not think that recent outspoken opposition by some Akeley residents to the referendum was the biggest factor that doomed it.

Some Akeley residents have recently addressed the issue of losing their school building, and have stated that if they would have known more students would be attending the Nevis School District today rather than the Walker-Hackensack-Akeley District, they would have voted against consolidation with W-H almost 10 years ago.