By Bill Leland, No. 2 Pencil

Last fall the voters of Albert Lea Area Schools chose to vote down a request to renew and expand the current operating levy referendum.

This has resulted in budget cuts to several student programs and fee increases of more than $1 million for this coming school year and beyond.

The impact of these cuts hopefully will not be any worse than anticipated, but experience has taught us that no matter how well the plan is thought out, changes will have to be made and adjustments will have to be done.

Does this constitute poor planning or any misrepresentation to the voters? No, it does not, but I believe there are a few people who perceive otherwise.

An example is the referendum levy that is currently in place.

When presented for discussion and eventual vote by the community in 2002, this levy was thought to carry the district through five years of operations with little or no need for cuts or fee increases.

It also added all-day, everyday kindergarten, reduced class sizes and brought back busing to the one-mile limit. What was not foreseen was two years of flat funding from the state.

Therefore, the current five-year referendum did not see the district through the full five years as anticipated.

This resulted in requiring the district to ask for a renewal of this levy a year early and also with an increase in the amount to be levied.

Another example is the old Cap Emmons Auditorium. When the new high school was built, the original intention was to utilize the district-office portion of the old high school and make available other sections of the building for use by various parties.

In fact, one document that was mailed out to the community in 1997 read: &8220;Existing High School: Some parts of the present high school and LJ &8216;Cap&8217; Emmons auditorium will be retained to house several district level services and to serve as a community resource. Other areas of the structure that are not used by the school district or by the community may be sold or demolished as determined by the school board.&8221;

What was not anticipated was the ability of the district two years later to reconfigure the use of the district buildings. By moving the sixth-grade program back into the elementary buildings the district was able to free up enough space at Brookside Education Center to accommodate district offices, Community Education, early childhood programs and the Area Learning Center instead of staying in a portion of the old high school.

This move would save the district taxpayers the overhead of running a very inefficient building and eliminate the lease for the old Ramsey School building, which is privately owned.

A choice then had to be made; either take valuable general operating funds to keep a vacant, unused auditorium open or be fiscally responsible by selling the entire old high school building.

Both examples embody the issues encountered in looking back at what decisions were made and seeing more clearly &8212; a better path. But we can only learn from the lesson presented and attempt to account for future trends the best we can. What we cannot do is change the past.

Ahead of us are some pressing choices regarding what our school district will look like for the next five to 10 years. Future budget cuts, fee increases and the need for local financial effort will be the constants.

What the community chooses to do by way of financial support to the district, the desire to be informed on the issues and the willingness to engage actively with the decision makers at the state Capitol are just some of the important variables.

Our community will likely have the opportunity again this fall to choose and to decide what kind of learning opportunities to offer our children. It is an important decision, and one that I hope everyone who is part of the Albert Lea Area Schools community will take very seriously.

Bill Leland is a member of the Albert Lea school board.