I’ve been following the Greenway school district’s financial woes for a while now. The district posed a major extension of three excess operational levies to keep its budget afloat for the next few years. The referendum, opposed by a group touting fiscal responsibility, failed by healthy margin. I argued, and maintain, that this was a survival referendum for the district. Without solving the financial mess involved here this district cannot compete in an open enrollment environment. The board and superintendent aren’t publicly acknowledging this reality, but there is a great deal of debate about what to do next.

In today’s Hibbing Daily Tribune, by way of the Grand Rapids Herald-Review, Marie Nitke writes a story about people within the Greenway community wanting to create a financial plan for the district before coming back to the community for support. Great idea. It would have been even greater before they ran this latest failed referendum. This district needs help and it’s one of several across the Iron Range that will be coming to the existential crossroads before the end of the decade. The 2010 gubernatorial election couldn’t have greater implications than they do here in Northeastern Minnesota. The erosion of Wendell Anderson’s “Minnesota Miracle” education funding system is killing us.

A divided district

Former hockey coach hopes for healing
Saturday, May 31, 2008 By Marie Nitke

COLERAINE — In a heartfelt plea to the community to unite for the good of Greenway, Pat Guyer, a community leader and former Greenway High School boy’s hockey coach, captured the confusion, mixed emotions, frustration and unyielding spirit of pride that exists among Greenway’s residents today, in the wake of last week’s failed “revoke and replace” levy referendum.

“Through the whole ordeal of the referendum we’ve really become a divided community,” Guyer said at Wednesday’s school board meeting. “Family and friends are divided and not speaking to each other, on harsh terms; children are crying out of fear of the unknown, of what’s going to happen next; kids are saying they’re going to leave and go to other schools; businesses are being boycotted; we hear people accusing people of personal agendas, and probably many more things that I’ve missed.”

This divide progressively widened as the May 20 special election neared and two groups with opposing viewpoints — one for the referendum and one against — each campaigned for their causes. Ultimately, the “No” votes overcame the “Yes” votes, and the referendum failed. This means the district will start losing funding as its current referendums phase out, starting in 2009-2010. Now, Guyer says, the people of Greenway need to come together and work through their differences to ensure the school district’s survival.

According to Guyer, the biggest issue Greenway faces right now is a lack of trust: “I believe there is no trust. And because you’re divided, who do you trust? The school board? The Superintendent? The teachers? I believe that that has really been fractured through this whole deal, and that needs to be fixed in some way, shape or form. I do know this — we do have common ground. In everything I’ve read and everything I’ve heard, in listening to school board members and people in the community, I believe…the people that are here are for Greenway. That’s what I hear ringing loud and clear. We all agree that we need a referendum at some point. We differ on when we want or need it, but we all want it at some point.”

Getting past the differences in opinion, Guyer admitted, will be tough. But he said the Greenway School District will survive as long as the school administration, school board, teachers, and community members of all ages and from all across the Greenway footprint are working on solutions together, sharing ideas and coming up with a solid plan for Greenway’s future. He proposed the formation of a committee, called “Greenway Now and Forever,” which would meet regularly to do just this.

Guyer said he’d like the committee, with the help of Business Manager Ben Hawkins, to come up with two 3-year financial plans for Greenway. One plan would include referendum dollars, in case a future referendum were held and passed, and one plan that would include no referendum dollars whatsoever. He said the committee would also have to address the teacher retiree lawsuits currently in litigation.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen with the teacher lawsuit,” he said. “I understand that and I’ve been told that. But you need a plan in place if it goes one way or if it goes the other way. We can’t get caught saying, ‘Ahh! What do we do?’ I’m not saying there’s not a plan in place, but that the public doesn’t know about it. It’s not something that you can grab and touch, and I think that’s the frustration of everybody that’s involved.”

In the end, Guyer said: “We can make something happen or we can wait for something to happen. I think that only with the unification of thoughts, ideas and practices from our whole community will we make a difference here. The words ‘pride’ and ‘care’ are only words — unless you put them into action. And we can use pride and we can use care, put them into action, do it together, and we’ll find out what Greenway’s really made of. Because I know it’s time to become part of the solution. We need to find a way to get there and get everybody to the table and do that. It’s the only way we’re going to survive.”

At the end of the meeting, Superintendent Rochelle VanDenHeuval agreed with Guyer’s statements, saying, “We need to try to bring this community together… and decide, ‘What is our plan?’” She said a committee will be formed this summer.

Marie Nitke is a staff writer for the Grand Rapids Herald-Review, a Superior Publishing Corporation newspaper.