School boards and school administrators should be concerned about state legislation that reaches into a local school district for a report and demands an answer in a short time.

The Elk River School District 728 is under a state mandate to assemble a task force to research and make recommendations on the school districtís governance, programming and facilities.

Whatís more it required the Minnesota Department of Education to provide a facilitator for the study. The volunteer task force is being asked to examine the issues, rank them and make recommendations to the school board.

The school board can receive the recommendations and implement all, part, or none of them. The board, however, must report its findings to the Legislature, and who knows what will happen to them?

This legislation is a compromise to a bill offered by Rep. Joyce Peppin of the legislative district which contains the city of Rogers and Hassan Township. Her bill originally was designed to have the residents of District 728 vote this November on the question of splitting the district south of the Mississippi River.

The House Education and Reform Committee did not go along with that idea, but showed some interest in having a process whereby a part of a larger school district could be split off into a smaller one.

At the time, the majority of the school district board members and the acting interim school superintendent opposed the split, saying it wouldnít result in better or less expensive education.

The task force presented its recommendations to the school district, one of which was that the school board commission a study on the efficacy of dividing the school district and that the state pay for the study, since the local district doesnít have the funds.

It said, ìThe study would be valuable to both this school district organization and other school districts facing similar challenges and hence, should be fully funded by the state of Minnesota.î

The bigger question, however, is why is the Legislature involving itself in a local school districtís business? According to observers such investigation of a local school district is rare.

The trend in school organization is toward consolidation, not making smaller districts. In the past, some bigger school districts have been confronted with requests to allow a division into smaller parts, most notably in Anoka-Hennepin, now the largest school district in Minnesota.

Examining ways to develop a process to allow parts of a school district to split off and form a smaller school district is one thing, but this procedure involving Elk River is going beyond the norm which gave a local legislator something to take back to her constituents.

If itís nothing more than that, fine, but school districts interested in governance had better take a hard look at the outcome, or their school district could be next. ó Don Heinzman

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