Lakeland uses videos to answer levy questions

The Lakeland Joint School District produced a series of short YouTube videos featuring Superintendent Lisa Arnold that aim to inform the public about the two Lakeland levies on the May 16 ballot.

“My goal is that I want as many people as possible to go to the polls May 16, so their voices are heard,” Arnold said. “But we want people to be educated voters.”

The district is asking voters to pass a supplemental levy for $9.5 million per year for two years, and a school plant facilities reserve levy for $1.146 million per year for two years.

If the both levies fail, major budget cuts would have to begin immediately to reduce costs, cutting services like extracurricular activities, un-funding the student resource officer and cutting staff.

Arnold’s videos are emailed to parents and posted on the district’s social media sites to encourage people to vote and keep them informed.

“We get asked often by people who don’t have any ties to our schools, ‘Why should we support Lakeland schools?’” Arnold said in one of the videos. “Strong public schools equal strong communities.”

Topics are selected from frequently asked questions or common misconceptions on social media, or from emails district staff receive.

In one video, Arnold touted the Lakeland graduation rate of about 96% and warned that high dropout rates can lead to increases in local crime. It’s implied that dropout rates could increase as a result of rejecting the levies.

“When we have a high dropout rate in the community, those kids don’t have the resources to leave the community and they tend to stay,” Arnold said. “We start to see some of the things that we love about our community change. You might start to see some graffiti, vandalism and maybe a higher crime rate.”

Another question, or common misconception, centers on how state funding will be distributed in the district.

“There is some confusion among community members about what we’re doing about the new money that is coming from Gov. Little, specifically for salary enhancement,” Arnold said in another video.

The Legislature's Joint Finance Appropriations Committee approved a budget with $145 million earmarked to cover salary enhancements.

“The new salary dollars say that every teacher in our district must get a pay increase,” Arnold said. So while it seems like the state is covering teacher’s salaries, the money will only cover the difference from pay raises, and will not cover baseline salaries beyond what the state already covers. Levy dollars that expire this year have covered the rest of the salary gap of what the state does not pay."

Another video explains what the district has done with money it received during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The district received ESSER II and ESSER III dollars from the Biden administration for COVID-19 safety measures and to cover learning loss. ESSER dollars are grant money from the American Rescue Plan Act allocated to Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief.

By June 30, ESSER dollars the district has received or will receive have been fully allocated and spent. Much of the ESSER II money was spent for facility safety measures like improved ventilation to limit the spread of COVID-19. Learning loss ESSER III money has been spent to enhance curriculum or limit the impact of lost school time on education.

Lakeland spent ESSER III money on math curriculum, and will spend the rest on science and language arts curriculum this fiscal year.

Some of the ESSER III money also covered salaries. During COVID-19, classes had to have fewer students, so salaries were covered to bring on additional teachers. Since then, enrollment has also gone up with population growth in the area. The staff brought on during COVID are now necessary for maintaining standard class sizes with the higher enrollment, Arnold said.

Failure of the supplemental levy would reduce the district's budget by about 16%.

The facilities levy would cover one-time expenses for building maintenance on things like replacing the siding on at least three district buildings or replacing roofs on some of the schools. Construction is supposed to start in the summer of 2023 on Lakeland Middle School to replace siding, windows and doors, where the old material is molding or rotting away from snow buildup.

Construction on Athol Elementary and Spirit Lake Elementary will follow in the summer of 2024. The total cost of updating all three buildings is over $2.5 million, and other buildings in the district will still need other maintenance.

A link to the videos can be found at sd272.org/may-levy or on the Lakeland District's official Facebook page.