Red Lake County Central Schools
School District News, by Superintendent Guetter
March 2010
It is with the optimism of a life long Minnesotan that we look at the month of March as the start of spring. This optimism probably comes from the increase in daylight more so than the increase in temperature. Life is just more enjoyable with optimism and hope, and after the last few months who isn’t ready for a change.
March Madness-the girl’s team will have finished their regular season by the time you receive this and will be starting the playoff’s on Thursday March 4th with the State tournament wrapping up on the 20th. The boys have two regular season games left on Monday the 1st and Friday the 5th before the playoffs start on the 11th and the State tournament ending on the 27th. Good luck to both teams as they enter the playoff stretch. The Wrestling team has already ended participated in the team portion of the playoffs with Frazee winning the Section title. The individual tournament is being held the last weekend in February with the results not known yet so watch the paper and website for those results.
The Elementary Wrestling squad will be hosting a tournament in Oklee on Thursday March 11th, and have about 37 kids out from grades Pre-kindergarten through 6th grade. Charles and Wes Magnell and Mr. Aaron Nelson practice with this crew on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The elementary Basketball program is wrapping up the season with a 6th grade tournament the last weekend in February. They had over seventy kids out in grade 3 through 6th, and played games throughout January and February. Mitch Bernstein, Shawn Hince, Mallory Gerardy, Phil Fore and Connie Bishop held practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school, and games were mostly played on Saturdays. The 6th grade boys and girls teams practiced with the Junior High teams, and Mr. Pederson then also coached the 6th grade girls in their games.
The Speech team is in full swing with meets every Saturday and a few during the week as well for both the Varsity and Junior Varsity competitors. They will be hosting their annual meet at the High School on Saturday March 27th with sponsorship by the Plummer Lion’s Club. There are several individuals that are performing very well and bringing home honors from every meet. The Knowledge Bowl teams are still competing in their season and have a strong number of students competing.
So as you can see some people and students have been very busy. Upcoming events for March are: SADD Talent show on Sunday March 14th at the High School, Oklee Community Ed. Easter Egg hunt on Sunday the 28th, Early out for school on Friday the 12th and the end of the third quarter is Friday the 26th. The Little Miss Oklee Pageant is on Saturday the 6th.
The School Boards have their regular meetings on Monday the 8th in Plummer and Wednesday the 10th in Oklee. One item we have been looking into is to make improvements to the Indoor Air Quality systems for each building, as well as looking at the financial picture for the next couple of years for each district. The student enrollment numbers are strong and with a large projected Kindergarten class next fall the enrollment projections are on the increase. So the next variable in the funding picture is the State and then the Federal funding streams. Our Federal funding comes in really two categories: one being Special Education and the other being through Title programs also referred to as No Child Left Behind. This current year we did receive some additional dollars under these two areas from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Stimulus dollars). Our Special Education funding comes to reimburse a small part of our actual expenditures. However the title funds are determined from census numbers… so yes those advertisements you are starting to hear about the 2010 Census and how it affects local school funding is very true. So PLEASE, fill out the Census Forms because we have been on a ten year decline of funding because of the results of the last Census in 2000! The State funding will be a challenge as there is currently a 1.2 billion dollar shortfall, with a new projection coming out in the beginning of March. And the following two year funding biennium is looking even tighter than what we are facing now. So far we have not had cuts in our State Funding, but we have had two different cases of our funding being delayed. For this current year we are receiving only 73% of our funding with the other 27% hopefully coming next school year. And most recently we were notified that we will have $247,000 from Oklee and $182,000 from Plummer withheld until the end of May. These types of moves cause definite cash flow issues for school districts. While both of our districts can get by this year without the need to borrow money until we get our full payments from the State, I am not sure what the future will bring. It is a very challenging time at the State Legislature, with the economic challenges we all face and then there also seems to be a very political fight going on between not only the Republicans and the Democrats but also between the Governor, the Senate and the House of Representatives. In some sense it is similar to the fighting that is going on at the Federal Level as well. It sure would be nice to see that the obstacle was the real problem and not the opposing party, then maybe we could get some good solutions. But we will still keep the faith as this is still the best country and one of the best States to live in!
Sincerely,
Superintendent Jim Guetter