School board to select superintendent finalists tonight
Mar. 18—The Albert Lea school board is slated to vote Tuesday night on the finalists for the superintendent position.
The district, through the Minnesota School Boards Association, collected applications for the position through the beginning of March, after which the MSBA conducted preliminary screening of applicants.
School board Chairman Dave Klatt gave a summary of next steps with the search at the end of the regular school board meeting Monday and said the board will meet for first-round interviews with the finalists starting at 9 a.m. March 26. Each candidate will interview for approximately one hour, and then the board will narrow the field down to two or three finalists.
Second-round interviews are slated for March 31 starting at 4 p.m.
The interviews are open to the public.
The board is expected to select an individual for the position that evening, after which they will begin negotiations with that person.
The board is slated to approve the employment contract at the regular meeting April 7.
In other action:
—The board voted to not renew contracts with a group of 11 probationary teachers at the close of the 2024-25 school year as provided by law.
Teachers were Frank Cacich, Emily Honsey, Tara Hueper, Karen Hutzell, Josie Mueller, Prutha Patel, Britta Peterson, Jana Rieck, Lacey Scheilder, Victoria Strege and Kristy Wright.
Ashley Mattson, executive director of Human Resources for the district, said the teachers were all probationary and can be non-renewed without cause. They all received their notice of non-renewal on Friday prior to the Monday meeting.
Mattson said there were many factors that contributed to the non renewals, including declining enrollment, financial limitations and expirations of out-of-field permissions at the end of the year. Out-of-field permission allows a teacher to teach outside of their licensure field or scope for one academic year.
—Heard an update from interim Superintendent David Krenz regarding the district's budget. Krenz presented his findings about the budget from his time with the district in the last few months and in light of discussion from a recent workshop with Paul Durbahn, direction of finance and operations for the district. Durbahn at that time discussed the need to reduce the budget by over $2 million moving into the next school year.
Krenz said he has been getting a lot of questions about what has happened to get the district to this point and what is expected in the future.
He said the district dating back to the 2018-19 school year has been losing enrollment, which equates to a reduction in revenue to the district. The district started making reductions at that time.
In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government decided it was important to help K-12 education and higher education with funding. He said some of the funds the district received were used to help offset some of the reductions. The district also at that time implemented a lot of technology and purchased safety equipment to make sure everyone was safe.
At the same time, the district continued to lose enrollment.
Krenz said the district received Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief funds through September 2024 that covered a lot of the extra expenses; however, once that funding went away, the expenses remained.
He said the total enrollment declined over 300 students from 2018 through 2024.
"That adds up to a lot of revenue that we've had to look at now to make those reductions," he said.
Next school year the district is looking at an estimated reduction in 45 students; the following year it is looking at 68; and the year after that it is looking at an estimated 89, for an average of 67.3 students per year over the next three years.
Knowing this, he said there are two things the district could do, either decrease expenses to balance the budget or increase revenues, though he noted there aren't a lot of choices to increase revenues. While they hope the state will provide more funding, that will likely not happen, he said. The district could go out to local taxpayers for an operating referendum.
He said he thought it was important for the community to understand that this wasn't just one year that put the district in this situation but has rather been over the course of several years and said it could continue for more years as well.
He noted that the 12% fund balance that the district strives to keep in place is equivalent to a month and a half of operations and is in place especially to cover expenses in the event the state does not always pay what is due to the district up front.
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