Rob Rapheal
Guest Columnist
Imagine my surprise when I got home from out of town and read that the Forest Lake City Council had sabotaged the school district’s plan to partner with the YMCA for our aquatic sports and our dance team. I was stunned.
Rapheal
This was supposed to be a routine action by the council to allow a change to their contract with the YMCA accommodating an increased building size. Council Members Winnick, Freer, Eigner and Weber have acted in a manner that, although consistent, was irresponsible, short-sighted and blind to the needs of our district students. Their ill-conceived action will have negative effects on our dance team, synchro team and swim teams for years to come. To be absolutely clear, this agreement had no impact on the cost to the city of the project and did nothing but add value. They should be ashamed of their vote.
Let me give some background on the issue. The pool at Southwest Junior High is reaching the end of its life and does not meet our student needs in a number of ways, including being able to host diving meets.
In 2009 and 2010, the School Board conducted a gap analysis to determine the physical needs of the district. In 2012, a facilities task force was created. After months of work, the task force, consisting of over 60 citizens, experts and district employees, recommended filling in the pool and building a new aquatic center at Century Junior High as part of a larger campus reconfiguration.
When the bond election that would have funded the recommendations of the task force failed, none of the problems that it was trying to address disappeared. To find our way forward, the School Board put together another task force and asked them to come up with a more affordable package that could still meet the needs of the district for the long term. One of the unanimous recommendations of the citizens of the task force was to partner with the new YMCA so that we could share costs, reduce operating expenses and reduce the cost of the bond.
After a number of meetings, the School Board gave its unanimous support, and, after many weeks of negotiations with the Y, we agreed on a long-term contract that was flexible and more than met the needs of the district.
This partnership meant that the swim teams would have eight lanes of practice space, a dive well, offices for the coaches, a separate entrance for spectators, the ability to host tournaments and prime practice time. It would have also provided more pool space for the community – all without the district having to manage the pool facility or its equipment.
The School Board was unanimous in approving the final contract. All that was left was for the City Council to take the simple procedural action of allowing the modification of their contract to change the size of the building.
Unfortunately for the kids of our district, Winnick, Freer, Eigner and Weber – despite having never officially met with the district or even, to my knowledge, visited the pool for a tour – voted against amending their contract, so the project has been sunk. In fact, Mr. Freer stated during the council meeting that he didn’t feel that it was even the council’s business to vote on the issue at all. After hearing statements from Mr. Winnick that the district could be using lease bonding money to buy laptops instead of leasing a pool, it seemed pretty clear to me that he has little to no understanding of how school financing actually works.
If the council members choose to be uninformed about the needs of our district kids, so be it. I just ask that in the future, they defer to people who are willing do the hard work of planning for the long-term well-being of our kids.
Rob Rapheal is the president of the Forest Lake Area School Board.