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School Board Briefs
Published Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Board members speak to legislature:
School board members Melanie Cole and Darrel Tungseth joined Superintendent Jerry Ness in St. Paul last week to speak before the House E-12 Education Committee on district funding.
The Fergus Falls delegates joined administrators from communities including Frazee, St. Cloud and Robbinsdale in sharing how their district has struggled financially in recent years.
“Basically the message was pretty much the same — that the financial system we have isn’t working,” Tungseth said of state funding at Monday’s school board meeting.
Some administrators, Ness said, shared stories of cutting as much as $5 million from their budgets.
A yet-to-be-introduced bill from Rep. Mindy Greiling (DFL-Roseville) would repeal a tax break on incomes over $500,000 a year, resulting in a 2 percent increase on the basic formula for education funding, Tungseth said. This would result in an additional $300,000 for the Fergus Falls school district.
Contract with online school explored:
The Fergus Falls school board on Monday decided to explore a contract with KC Distance Learning, a provider of online high school courses. The company, which has created iQ Academies in states across the country, would create an online program exclusively with Fergus Falls and no other Minnesota school district.
iQ Academy Minnesota would give district students the opportunity to take classes not offered in Fergus Falls. KC Distance Learning would also work to attract students within the district who have never been part of the public school system, as well as students in other parts of the state.
What’s exciting about a potential partnership, said Superintendent Jerry Ness, is that more online students would mean more students enrolled in the district and more teachers.
“The goal is to have 200 (online students) by next fall and that would mean six teachers hired back,” Ness said.
Monday’s decision means the district will continue to hold talks with KC Distance Learning and come back to the school board with a partnership proposal in coming weeks.
Comments
The Daily Journal is happy to host community conversations about news and life in Fergus Falls and the surrounding area. As hosts, we expect guests will show respect for each other. That means we don't threaten or defame each other, and we keep conversations free of personal attacks. Witty is great. Abusive is not. If you think a post violates these standards, don't escalate the situation. Instead, flag the comment to alert us. We'll take action if necessary. It's not hard. This should be a place where people want to read and contribute -- a place for spirited exchanges of opinion. So those who persist with racist, defamatory or abusive postings risk losing the privilege to post at all.Posted by 0620lgb (anonymous) on March 12, 2008 at 7:24 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Does it help to blame this and that for the financial troubles in the schools.
How about the schools living on what they get for a change.
The "golden pot" is running dry.
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