There’s a lot at stake in the South Washington County School District in Tuesday’s election.

Voters will be electing three candidates to the school board and deciding whether to approve a $200 million, two-question bond referendum to fund improvements at the schools. Also on the ballot: a question asking voters to increase the district’s current $2.8 million technology levy to $5 million.

The district, which has 18,790 students, includes all or parts of Woodbury, Cottage Grove, Newport, St. Paul Park, Afton and Denmark and Grey Cloud Island Townships.

School board candidates

Eleven candidates are running for three seats on the school board, including incumbents Melinda Dols and Simi Patnaik. School board member Louise Hinz decided not to run for re-election.

Also running: Fekadu Kassa Ayichew, Chad Borseth, Ryan Clarke, Priscilla Kathryn Dimbo, Randall Johnson, Jaime Kokaisel, Anthony Mahmood, Satonia Moore and Molly Schaefer.

Although Ayichew’s name is on the ballot, he said Thursday he has dropped out of the race.

Clarke, Kokaisel and Mahmood are running as a slate of candidates and have been endorsed by Minnesota Parents Alliance, a conservative group formed last year to push back against K-12 initiatives that promote racial equity and support for LGBTQ students. Dols, Moore and Patnaik have been endorsed by Education Minnesota.

In a candidates’ forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of the Woodbury Cottage Grove Area, the candidates were asked what they felt was the number one issue that needs to be addressed by the school board.

Borseth is a special education teacher at Central High School in St. Paul who previously worked as a special education teacher at East Ridge High School in Woodbury.

Chad Borseth (Courtesy of the candidate)

“Having worked in the schools for five years, I believe that the number one priority facing our schools is our school culture,” Borseth said. “Too many children, students, parents and staff are walking into our schools, and they don’t feel comfortable. We have got to get to a spot where we don’t need to have school-inclusion centers in our schools because everyone feels included. They feel good about walking into the door. With school culture, relationships are strengthened, and these relationships are what the FBI says is the number one thing that we can do to enhance our school security. Eighty-one percent of instances of violence in schools, others have known about it prior. I’ve experienced similar things like this, not to this degree in East Ridge, but similar. It’s about relationships and school culture.”

Clarke said the top priority that needs to be addressed by the school board is “academic achievement and excellence.”

Ryan Clarke (Courtesy of the candidate)

“That’s really what we’re about,” Clarke said. “We’re a diverse group of people. We have diverse viewpoints, diverse world views, diverse experiences. All the people who are sending their children to school, what we’re expecting, as a stakeholder in this, is that our kids come out of school able to have some aptitude and acumen with certain things. Overall, that’s the most important thing. Is the fiscal and financial side important? Absolutely. However, the cost-per-pupil has gone up basically year over year for a whole decade, and what has happened with the test scores? … Those scores have gone down as the cost-per-pupil goes up, so I’m not necessarily sure throwing money at it is (the answer). … It’s a lot about having parents involved, having good kids, good behavior, good expectations, high expectations for our kids, for our educators and our parents.”

Dimbo said the board has a “responsibility to get back to the basics.”

“It goes back to school culture,” she said. “As a society, we were not always testing at 50-percent grade level. Back in 2013, we were testing 78 percent above grade level. So what changed has been the culture. We are trying to pick and choose where we’re trying to fit a private-school outcome in public-school income. We can’t do that. We have to get back to basics and understand that not everybody is going to fit into a particular mold, but the majority of the people will, and those are the people that we have to take care of and then take care of everybody else, so that everybody feels like they matter.”

Dols, a mental health therapist, was elected to the school board in 2019. The number one issue facing the district is its growth, she said.

Melinda Dols (Courtesy of the candidate)

“It’s really a double-edged sword,” Dols said. “It’s wonderful that we are growing, and we’re the sixth-largest district and that means homes are selling like hotcakes. Our land is developing everywhere, so that means more and more students coming into our district, and it means less and less space, so it’s harder to deal with transportation and we have to figure out the boundary issues and we’re having to do things like bonds and levies to keep up with our tremendous growth. But the positive of that is just how desired our district is and that people are moving to this district because of our highly rated schools – both academically and just students feeling safe in the schools. … When we have overcrowded schools, it’s really hard to keep those kids physically safe when they’re in school, so that’s a lot of why we also need to have these (bond) referendums pass.”

Johnson did not participate in the candidates’ forum. In a response to the Pioneer Press’ “Election 2023” online voters’ guide, he said his top priority if elected would be: “Making sure that the curriculum is there to support our future, not hinder them. I was held back a grade, it’s ok, not everyone matures at the same pace. … Let’s make sure that everyone is getting the education they deserve.”

Kokaisel said academics is the number one issue that needs to be addressed by the school board.

Jaime Kokaisel (Courtesy of the candidate)

“We used to be much, much better in our academics,” Kokaisel said. “That has fallen, as can be seen by the ‘World’s Best Workforce’ reports. And the (Minnesota Department of Education) sets the standards for us to be following, and we are not meeting any of them. Just to list off some of those: the ability for our kids to be ready for school, third-grade reading proficiency, kids are able to graduate. … We are not able to meet any of them, and that didn’t used to be the case.”

Mahmood said “education of our children” needs to be the board’s top priority.

Anthony Mahmood (Courtesy of the candidate)

“Are our children doing well?” Mahmood said. “A couple of things that I’ve read (show that) 50 percent of our children are passing for their grade. That’s not good. I don’t think that’s good. So I think that’s number one issue is figuring that out. How do we raise our children’s test scores? We do that by focusing on reading, writing, math, science, history — those are the things that we need to focus on.”

Moore said academics, safety and funding are all areas of importance, but said the board must also focus on the students’ social and emotional well-being.

“If a student is not socially, emotionally and academically prepared to learn, they won’t learn anyway,” Moore said. “You can’t just constantly focus on only academics. I’ve seen this for too many years. They have to be well-rounded in all areas.”

Patnaik, who was elected to the school board in 2019, said the biggest issue facing the board is the district’s finances.

Simi Patnaik (Courtesy of the candidate)

“Everything stems from here,” Patnaik said. “It really is what allows us to make any strategic decisions that we might have to make going forward. When we have enough money in the bank, it allows us to pay staff competitively, which can forestall teacher shortages. It allows us to invest in curriculum like our American Reading Corporation curriculum that really allows us to dig deep on literacy and make some big changes there. It allows us to address the growth that’s happening in our school district. Two years ago, we made $10 million worth of cuts in our budget, and it was really painful, but one of the benefits of that is that it’s allowed us to redeploy the money that we were spending in other areas (to do things) like giving raises to paraprofessionals.”

Schaefer said the “safety and well-being of students” is the number one issue that needs to be addressed by the school board.

Molly Schaefer (Courtesy of the candidate)

“At the end of the day, the school board is here because of our students,” Schaefer said. “The district is here because of our students. That is our number one priority, and to ensure that our students have a safe and equitable education, where they have what they need in order to succeed in whichever area that they choose to pursue. Primarily, we need to make sure that each student is treated as a whole person. That means understanding who they are, where they come from, and allowing them to start being vulnerable in order to learn. … We need to allow our students to feel safe enough to stand up and say, ‘Hey, I don’t know this, I’m going to be vulnerable in this place.’ And that in itself will help elevate some of our test scores that we’re seeing where we’re really falling behind, and that will also help with some of the life skills that our students need.”

Bond referendum

Last year, voters in the district decisively rejected a historic $462 million bond request by a nearly two-to-one ratio. Now, district officials are back with a smaller ask in a two-question format.

The first question asks if voters would support a $160 million bond referendum for safety and security enhancements, expansions and renovation at secondary schools.

The second question asks voters to support a $40 million bond referendum for additions at four elementary schools and the construction of more bathrooms at five 1960s-era elementary schools.

The passage of the second bond question is contingent on the passage of the first question. If the second question fails, elementary school attendance boundary changes will be implemented for the 2024-2025 school year, Superintendent Julie Nielsen told the Pioneer Press in September.

The third question on the ballot asks voters to revoke the district’s current $2.8 million technology levy and renew it at a higher amount. If approved, the $5 million levy, which is proposed for 10 years, would “enhance cybersecurity, maintain technology infrastructure, upgrade security cameras, expand digital access to curriculum and learning tools, update educational and business software licensing, and maintain the devices distributed to students and staff during the pandemic with a refresh cycle to keep devices updated,” according to district officials.

If passed, the measures would add about $9 a month, or $111 a year, to the property tax bill of a $409,000 house, the median value for homes in the district.

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