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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Superintendent affirms support for Tower School

Marcus White
Posted 2/13/19

VIRGINIA - St. Louis County Schools Superintendent Reggie Engebritson affirmed her support for the Tower-Soudan School atTuesday’s board meeting. The move came after South Ridge Board Member Chet …

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Superintendent affirms support for Tower School

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VIRGINIA - St. Louis County Schools Superintendent Reggie Engebritson affirmed her support for the Tower-Soudan School atTuesday’s board meeting. The move came after South Ridge Board Member Chet Larson questioned the school’s viability at the last board meeting.

Engebritson said the district did a cost analysis of the campus and found the Tower School costs the district about $1.8 million to run. She said, however, that $800,000 of that was brought in as revenue to the school and the other million are costs the district would incur from staffing and other overhead regardless of whether the school was open or not.

Board Member Troy Swanson who represents the Tower area was relieved at the announcement.

“There has been a fear from people in the town,” he said. “We just want to make sure there is a school there.”

Engebritson said she is aiming to have a 1:14 staff-to-student ratio at the school, and with a 0.5 FTE cut to the school next year along with a projected increase in enrollment to 77 students, that should be where the school lands.

She said she doesn’t want to cause angst and worry in Tower every year and said the future of the school will only be evaluated if the number of enrolled students falls substantially. Engebritson used 28 enrolled students as an arbitrary number of when the district may reconsider the future of the school.

Chris Koivisto, the board member for Northeast Range in Babbitt, applauded the decision as well. Koivisto, along with Swanson, was the school’s biggest backer in the previous two meetings.

He said what works for Tower will work in Babbitt since the two schools share several program links as well as many students from Tower moving to Northeast Range for high school.

The move also had resounding support from the rest of the board, including Larson.

Union complaint

Prior to the regularly -scheduled meeting, the board heard a level three grievance from the Local 70 International Union of Operating Engineers. A level three grievance is when a party feels district administrators have failed to address an issue lodged against them.

The grievance, signed by every member of the district’s custodial staff, alleges that Engebritson is circumventing union collective bargaining rights by creating a head custodian position that is not unionized. The new position would be a district-wide position and would oversee all of the school buildings.

With many custodians retiring in coming years, the district has indicated they will move away from each building having its own head of maintenance.

Scott Marsyla, the union’s local business representative, said the staff and the union want the district to include the new position under the union contract since it is within its jurisdiction to have all engineering and custodial staff as members.

Marsyla said the union had been working with Engebritson, but said in response to their complaint, only minimal changes had been made to the position which ultimately still did not satisfy the requirement for the position to be unionized.

The new position would require a boiler’s license, one which Marsyla said a new employee would be better off earning through the union since the training is offered for free and will also allow current employees to train a new operator on how each building works.

The union pointed to a series of incidents nationwide, including a deadly one in Minneapolis, where improperly-trained boiler operators had mismanaged the system causing boilers to explode.

The board has 20 days to respond to the complaint.

Marsyla said the union will take the district to arbitration if the board does not respond the way the union hopes.

In other business, the board:

Will consider closing the fitness centers at North Woods and Cherry. Combined the two facilities only have 19 paying members and the district is losing $30,000 to keep the doors open after hours. The Cherry program was set to close anyway for construction this summer. The board will reconsider the closure once construction at Cherry is complete.

Engebritson said she is negotiating with the county to get a third School Resource Officer into the district. She said the county’s initial offer was to split the program cost 50/50. Board members instructed her to try for a better deal. Koivisto asked whether Northeast Range could utilize the Babbitt Police to augment the sheriff’s visits.