Carlton looks to hire elementary principal

Carlton schools superintendent Donita Stepan plans to relinquish her role as elementary principal at South Terrace Elementary and focus solely on her superintendent duties.

Stepan wears two hats now, part of an arrangement conceived earlier this year as a cost-saving measure. With Stepan holding two positions and high school/middle school principal Warren Peterson working part-time, savings to the district could be in the range of $85,000 to $90,000.

As the mid-school year approaches, it has become apparent to Stepan that South Terrace needs to have a fully licensed administrator onsite all the time.

Carlton is unique in being a small school district of fewer than 300 students and having two campuses. Stepan necessarily had to be away from South Terrace to cover her duties as superintendent, and that is when difficulties arose.

“Something I didn't anticipate happening is that the part-time that I am able to be there is not enough for the staff,” Stepan said during Monday’s school board meeting. “And I see it very clearly, the effect that it’s having on that building, and it’s a little bit sad to me, because we had so much fun last year, but they need more support.”

Board chairwoman Julianne Emerson agreed.

“The reality is that both buildings need the solid support of a principal,” she said.

Emerson compared the cost savings of the previous arrangement with the bigger cost to morale.

According to ZipRecruiter.com, the average annual salary for an elementary principal in Minnesota is $90,413. Carlton, being a small rural school district, would probably offer less than that for a starting level position. Even so, with a typical benefits package, the cost to the school district could approach $100,000.

Levy zooms down

Monday’s meeting was preceded by a Truth in Taxation hearing. Jen Smith from Arrowhead Regional Computing Consortium had good news for taxpayers as she presented plans for the school district tax levy payable for the year 2024 — it will go down by 22 percent, to $1.18 million.

“The total amount of revenue that the district will be collecting from the taxpayers in calendar year 2024 is $1,181,607,” she said.

This compares with a little over $1.5 million for 2023. This doesn’t mean an overall tax bill will go down. School taxes make up less than half of the total property tax bill and are often lower than city and county taxes.

Why the decrease? Mostly, its debt service, Smith said. Carlton paid up some of its bonds this year and did not borrow more money.

Other parts of the levy went down by a lesser amount, including the operating levy. Those taxes are based on enrollment, which has seen a steady decrease.

About 24 percent of the district’s revenue comes from the local levy. The majority, 58 percent, comes directly from the state.

The district planned to spend about $6.9 million in 2023-24, and about 66 percent of that went into wages and benefits. Revenues were expected to be around $6.5 million, resulting in a deficit of about $455,000 with a shortfall of over $244,000 in the general fund, the account from which salaries are paid.

After the meeting, Angela Lind, Carlton’s business manager, said that the sky is not falling. She pointed out that money available from the federal government is not shown on the current reports and can be used to balance out the deficit this year and part of next.

Also on Monday

- Mathew Hughes of ICS, a production management company with offices in Duluth, told the board that the winner of the competitive bidding for the boiler replacement at the middle/high school is Stack Brothers, which will install the boiler after making a door and stoop for $109,175.

“The school was built around the boilers,” Hughes said. There is no way to get the new boiler in without cutting a hole in a ceiling or wall. Going through the wall is the cheaper option, which puts another exterior door on the building.

The boiler itself has already been purchased for $90,000. That figure and the installation mentioned above, plus $11,000 to ICS for production management, $7,500 for permitting and $10,000 set aside for contingency, brings the total cost of the project to $227,675.

The Carlton secondary school has a two-boiler system, and the other boiler, which is still serviceable, has taken over the heating requirements. Schools commonly have a boiler backup in case the main one fails. Both of the existing boilers are more than 70 years old.

Money for the project will most likely come out of the long-term facilities maintenance budget, funds set aside by the state for these kinds of projects.

- Unanimously, and without a lot of discussion, the board formally approved the consensus reached at last week’s committee of the whole, namely, moving forward with consolidation with Wrenshall and the exploration of financial considerations connected with it.