Should parents be able to send children to Lake Mills?

GLENVILLE — The Glenville-Emmons School Board is considering closing off the border to out-of-state open enrollment to the Lake Mills School District.

This discussion comes on the heels of the school board making the decision to terminate the open enrollment agreement it had with the Northwood-Kensett School District last fall after Glenville-Emmons Superintendent Jerry Reshetar said the open enrollment agreement between the districts had been breached.

According to  Glenville-Emmons School Board Chairwoman Lisa Hayek, the action also led to greater discussion to reevaluate the school’s desire or need to continue the similar agreement it has with Lake Mills School District.

“By keeping the kids here and closing the border the thought is that it would help put the numbers back into our classrooms, our extracurricular programs,” Hayek said, explaining that by keeping the funding those students could bring into the district, the district would have the funds not only to maintain its programs, but would be able to increase its academic and extracurricular offerings.

Glenville-Emmons school board member Susie Miller said the board’s intent would not be to take away the option of parents currently open enrolled to Lake Mills, but rather to keep new children coming into the district within the Glenville-Emmons School system.

“We’ve made a lot of changes over the last four or five years with the consortium that we’re involved in, and we’ve been able to add on additional classes, so there are a lot of positive things going on in our district,” Miller said.

Reshetar would like people within the district to see those positives for themselves.

“We just want an opportunity for those students to consider our school as residents of our school district,” Reshetar said. “Right now they’re not given that opportunity or they’re not taking that opportunity.”

Reshetar noted the reply of area parent Christopher Martin when he was asked at Tuesday evening’s school board meeting if he ever looked into the Glenville-Emmons district before open enrolling his son to Lake Mills. Martin admitted he had not.

“I just want to have an opportunity for us to be competitive also for those students because we have an excellent school just like Lake Mills does,” Reshetar said.

Students like Martin’s would not be affected by the decision to close the border to Lake Mills. If the decision was made to do so, his son would be grandfathered into the program as would his younger children who are not yet school-aged. The decision would affect new families or those who have moved into the area from another school district.

Currently, the tuition agreement provides a net gain for Glenville-Emmons, as the funding paid to the district by the state is greater than the tuition it pays to Lake Mills. Some parents at the school board meeting pointed out that the school district should want to keep that gain.

Hayek, on the other hand, noted the school still has to break even with the students they have and the amount of funding it takes to educate them.

“There is open enrollment in Minnesota; however, the state would like or prefer to keep those dollars within Minnesota versus sending those dollars over the border,” Hayek said. “It was mentioned that, yes, we do pay a lower tuition rate for Iowa for any student crossing the border so we do have a net gain from a dollars standpoint, but if that is something that were to continue to happen, the vitality of this school district would be put in jeopardy.”

Miller said if everyone at the school board meeting worked at the school and the school board were their boss, they would want the board to do everything in their power to protect them.

“We’re here to protect the kids, the teachers, all the staff, the parents that want their kids there,” Miller said. “That’s our job. That’s why we were elected to be on the school board.”

She said part of the responsibility to protect the school district is not to just look at today but to look at the long term and do what is necessary to keep the school thriving.

Their words didn’t fall on deaf ears at the meeting.

Parents Sandy Vanek and Lisa Mannes were present and understood the perspective of the district while expressing their own views on the subject. Both parents have their children enrolled in the Lake Mills School District and feel parents should have the option of sending their children to another school district, even if it means crossing the state line.

Vanek’s decision came after her own daughters had already attended school in the Glenville-Emmons School District.

“I completely understand where they are coming from in needing to do what they have to do to keep the doors open,” Vanek said. “I think it’s a great school. They do have wonderful people, but again every family is different. Every family has different circumstances, and that was my main goal was to make sure they don’t close off our options.”

Her decision to transfer her kids to Lake Mills had to do with the belief that the school was a better fit for her daughters.

Mannes’ four children had never attended Glenville-Emmons. She recently moved into the school district but decided not to uproot her children from the school district they were already attending when her family decided to build a home on the Minnesota side of the border last March. She said knowledge of the open enrollment agreement with Lake Mills is one of the reasons she opted to build her home outside of Emmons. Otherwise, she would have stayed in Iowa.

For both Vanek and Mannes the decision was what was best for their families, and to some it’s simply a matter of convenience. The Lake Mills School District is simply closer to where they live than Glenville-Emmons, and miles can rack up rather quickly when running to and from school for extracurricular activities.

While many have their own opinion on the subject, the Glenville-Emmons School District has made no definite decision one way or the other.

Reshetar said the discussion on the issue is ongoing.