MOORHEAD - Barely a week after the narrow defeat of a school levy, the Moorhead School Board meeting Monday offered a taste of how that outcome will reshape the board's work.
Over the summer, a district task force spent countless hours researching ways to enhance Moorhead's world language program. On Monday as scheduled, the task force laid out its suggestions.
But the situation has changed profoundly since the summer. The upgrade would have been funded with some of the extra $5.25 million a year from the levy.
Board members are now balking at the mention of the word "implementation."
"At this point, with man hours and dollars available, I am very concerned about telling you to invest your time and energy," Lisa Erickson said about a planned feasibility study.
ADVERTISEMENT
Levy election results were canvassed by board members: 4,077 "yes" and 4,194 "no" votes.
A former board candidate, David Schuman, offered some feedback on what he thought was a poor job of selling the levy.
He said the district didn't convince the community it had exhausted all waste-cutting, efficiency-boosting measures before asking taxpayers for help. And he said the district offered generalities to explain how it would spend the extra $850 per pupil.
"I didn't feel the communication was there," said Schuman, who voted "no" on the levy, "and I didn't think we knew what our return on investment would be."
One way in which the district had specified it would use the levy money was to maintain and enhance its language program. A task force of administrators and community members has studied how to do that since June, as the district geared up for the vote.
Mary Thrond, a Minnesota State University Moorhead professor and the task force coordinator, spoke of the benefits of language study, from competitiveness in the global marketplace to increased math and reading scores.
Among the group's recommendations: expanding language offerings across grades and expanding the district's elementary Spanish immersion program into middle school. Thrond spoke of federal grants the district could tap.
But board members pointed out grants are too unreliable a financial foundation. Some argued against directing the district to explore ways to implement the recommendations because it could be at least a few years before the district can afford the changes.
ADVERTISEMENT
After some urging from Superintendent Lynne Kovash, board members gave her team the green light to study the feasibility of the suggestions.
"I don't want to just put it on the shelf," Kovash said of the task force report. "I want us to look at what we can do now and into the future."
