The Crookston School Board met on Monday evening and they gave approval to Superintendent Jeremy Olson to move forward and start negotiations with ICON out of Grand Forks, North Dakota as the bus garage architect. “We had two really good firms in ICON and YHR and after doing reference checks and looking over proposals the board approved moving forward with having contract negotiations with ICON,” said Olson. “By state statute we have to have an architect so that is something that needs to happen. We will start working with the architect and the community design committee and it will move into the design phase over the next couple of months and as we move into late spring and early summer we will start communicating pretty heavily on what we are asking for.”
The school board unanimously approved asking the school district residents to pass two options in a referendum in November, 2019. The two proposed referendum questions will be renewing the current operating referendum and a bus garage referendum. “Question one would be on the operating referendum to renew the current operating referendum. It would be the same dollar amount without tax dollars increasing so that should hold our taxpayers harmless,” said Olson. “Question two would be the bus garage. The committee has been working and obviously we will work on the design phase and cost estimation and start bringing some more information back to the community in late spring to early summer.”
Option one won’t bring an increase in taxes as it would be the renewal of a referendum already in place. “Question one wouldn’t be an increase and Question two could be an increase to the tax payers and what the increase would be remains to be seen. We also have a $100 per student referendum for the pool that will fall off and how it will all work, we just don’t have those numbers moving forward,” said Olson. “The operation referendum we absolutely need that. That is the operations of our school and we need that to operate the school. On the bus garage, we need that and if anyone has a question on why we need this, I would love to meet with you and I will personally take you down to the bus garage and show you why we need a new bus garage. It is actually scary. We need both for our district.”
The school board accepted several donations including-
– $11,926 from the June Shaver estate for healthcare scholarships to Crookston High School students.
– $3,569 from the June Shaver estate for the Drama Department
– $500 from the Crookston Eagles Club and $200 from the Eagles Auxiliary for the Europe trip
– $1,850 from the Northwest Minnesota Arts Council
– $500 from the Pirate Fine Arts Boosters
At the end of the meeting Chris Fee said he knew there was some questions from board members when they hired Lon Boike to help coach junior high girls basketball. Fee said his daughter, who is an eighth grader, wasn’t sure if she wanted to play basketball at the start of the year and lacked confidence and after working with Boike in practice she loves basketball and really enjoyed having Boike as a coach. Fee also added that his daughter is going out for track partially because Boike is one of the coaches. Fee added that Boike did a helluva job and had a huge positive impact on his daughter this winter.
The next scheduled Crookston School Board meeting will be held on Monday, April 22 at 5:00 p.m. in the Crookston High School Choir/Orchestra room.
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