She hadn’t meant to fall in love with anybody, and was she even in love at all? To be sure, something had clicked. Hugo made her laugh about herself. Laughing made her delirious. In Gary’s case, there was nothing like being rejected and then embraced. She’d been invisible, at best sneered at by most of the cool guys. Then suddenly adored by Gary, who’d been way too anxious to marry her. — from “The Mighty Red”

(Harper via AP)

Louise Erdrich’s “The Mighty Red” was touted early on as one of the big books of the season and this Minneapolis Pulitzer Prize winner exceeds expectations. No wonder BookPage speculated that her 19th novel “might just be a new American classic.”

In her first novel since “The Sentence” (2021), Erdrich displays all her writing talents in a multifaceted story set during hardships caused by the 2008 recession in a small town in North Dakota’s Red River Valley, named for the north-flowing Red River. She holds together human loves and foibles, hard-working people, destruction of the land, growing and processing sugar beets, life in a rural community, all surrounding a story about teen and mother-daughter love. Told in short chapters, some only a few paragraphs on the page, it’s tender-hearted, often funny and sometimes dark.

It begins with Native American Crystal hauling sugar beets from field to warehouse on the night shift. Her smart, bored, restless daughter, Kismet, is suddenly noticed by football hero Gary Geist, son of the richest farmer in the area. Kismet is kind of drawn to Gary because he makes her feel important and she thinks he needs her, but she’s also in love with Hugo, a big, smart, home-schooled guy who works at his mother’s bookstore. (Erdrich owns independent Birchbark Books in Minneapolis.)

Hovering over much of the story is a secret about an earlier accident involving Gary, which he won’t discuss. Against her better judgment, Kismet marries Gary and we meet his mother, who relies on Kismet to cook and clean. The marriage doesn’t go well and Kismet wants to go home to Crystal. Her mother worries about Kismet living at the Geist farm but she has her own problems after her theater-loving husband disappears with money from the church’s renovation fund and many in the town turn against her.

Louise Erdrich (Thomas Samson / AFP via Getty Images)

There are plenty of other characters, including Gary’s friends who were with him when the secret “something” happened, and women attending a hilarious book club meeting where they drink wine and snipe at one another while the harried hostess tries to keep the conversation on track.

Running through the narrative is the land, almost a character itself. Hugo goes off the oil patch for work that brings fracking into the story. The older farmers see what is happening to the soil when chemicals are sprayed on the fields, but younger ones like Gary see the future as organic.

Here Erdrich pulls these threads together:

“In some places, lambsquarters is considered the Prince of Greens, one of the most nutritious greens ever analyzed; it was one of the earliest agricultural crops of the Americas. It also resembles amaranth, but the brothers rarely spoke of that. The rough cut men were preparing to eradicate one of the most nutritious plants on earth in favor of growing the sugar beet, perhaps the least nutritious plant on earth. Evolution thought this was hilarious.”

Describing the plot of “The Mighty Red” can’t capture Erdrich’s poetic writing about hopes, dreams, hallucinations, fears and tragedy.. Best of all, she brings readers into 2023 to let us know what happened to the characters that have our sympathy.

“The Mighty Red” (Harper, $32) earned starred reviews from Kirkus (“deft, almost winsome”), Library Journal and Publishers Weekly “(tender and capacious”).

Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa (Ojibwe) and the author of novels, poetry, children’s books and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel “The Night Watchman” won the Pulitzer Prize and “The Round House” won the National Book Award. “Love Medicine” and “LaRose” received the National Book Critics Circle award.

She will discuss her novel at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Fitzgerald Theater, 10 E. Exchange St., St. Paul, in the Talking Volumes reading series. $30, $25, $22.50. Go to mprevents.org.

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Take your choice today. We’ve got a timely memoir by Minnesota’s first woman lieutenant governor, three stories of crime in old St. Paul, and selected/new poetry inspired by “up North.”

“Rise to the Challenge: A Memoir of Politics, Leadership, and Love”: by Marlene M. Johnson (University of Minnesota Press, $24.95)

My inauguration was a breakthrough for women in state government and a step on the journey to a public service career that I had envisioned for myself, yet it had happened so fast it was hard to believe. I felt ready for a new challenge, while at the same time I was aware that I had much to learn and that my long-held professional and personal insecurities lingered. — from “Rise to the Challenge”

(Courtesy of the University of Minnesota Press)

At the Brothers Deli in Edina Rudy Perpich ate chocolate cate and Marlene Johnson sipped coffee while the former governor invited Johnson to be his running mate in his 1982 campaign to reclaim the office he’d held from 1976 to 1979. That invitation sent Johnson on a journey that would make her Minnesota’s first woman lieutenant governor, serving from 1983 to 1991.

“I was excited to get started and determined to do all I could to do a good job and help create more opportunities for women and minorities in state government,” Johnson writes in her new memoir.

Johnson’s political/personal story couldn’t be more timely as we wait to see if the United States will have its first female president in Kamala Harris. If Harris wins, Gov. Tim Walz will become vice president and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan will be Minnesota’s first female governor.

Now 78, Johnson began honing her organizational skills during her grade school days in Braham, Minn., when she founded the Helping Hands Club to visit elderly women. Later, she was leader of the Young DFL organization at Macalester College and organized for DFL candidates at the precinct level. She championed and worked for women such as Linda Berglin, elected to the Minnesota House in 1972.

Johnson first met Rudy Perpich in 1977 when she set up a meeting with the governor and foreign journalists from the Macalester World Press Institute. The governor’s staff insisted he had no time for a meeting but Johnson persisted (which she was good at). Perpich was so impressed he offered four seats on his plane for that evening’s trip to Wadena. Three would go to institute fellows and the fourth to Johnson.

Perpich felt that Johnson as his runnng mate was “the natural outcome of my range of experiences over the past 25 years,” she writes.

Since Johnson didn’t come from the Twin Cities, she built a circle of influential women supporters through business contacts as co-founder of a marketing/publicity business, Split Infinitive, as well as co-founding the Minnesota chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners and the Minnesota Women’s Campaign Fund, a nonpartisan organization that raised money to support pro-choice women running for Congress and the U.S. Senate. (For those who remember local feminism in the 1970s, Johnson’s take on tension between the DFL Feminist Caucus and the Minnesota Women’s Political Caucus is particularly interesting.)

From the beginning of Perpich’s campaign he made it a point to empower Johnson, whom he tasked as lieutenant governor with leading Minnesota’s tourism strategy as an economic-development tool and chairing an appointments commission to advise him on candidates for all the state’s boards and commissions.

Marlene M. Johnson (John Kaul / University of Minnesota Press)

Johnson acknowledges some of Perpich’s Iron Range supporters were not pleased with her being on the ticket: “I was a young, pro-choice female whom they didn’t know. They could not understand how I would be an asset to the governor’s election.”

Perpich stressed to Johnson that she had an open invitation to attend any meetings on his schedule unless specifically told otherwise. He also urged Johnson to resist the legislative pressure to give up the separate lieutenant governor’s office space. (Although Johnson doesn’t say so, this was a smart power move because offices give status.)

By the early 1980s Johnson was open to a relationship, which she found in 1983 when she met Swedish businessman Peter Frankel, whom she married. They worked out a hectic schedule when they lived in Washington, D.C., and Sweden.

Johnson transitioned out of politics after Perpich lost the election to Republican Arne Carlson. During their last two years in office, Johnson and Perpich were not on good terms after he accused her of being disloyal to him. Surprised and dismayed, Johnson pointed out to the governor her loyalty and all the ways in which she had enhanced their administration.

The second half of Johnson’s memoir pivots to her private life as she writes of spending happy times at her and her husband’s summer house in Sweden. Then, her life changed again when Peter fell and was left with a traumatic brain injury. She had to accept that her best friend and strongest supporter would spend the rest of his life in a nursing facility in Sweden. While working as executive director/CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, Johnson embarked on a schedule of working in Washington three weeks a month and spending the other week supervising her husband’s care in Sweden. She kept that exhausting pace for nine years, until Peter’s death in 2019.

Johnson lives in Washington, D.C., where she is a board member of the Washington Office on Latin America. In 1988 she was awarded the Royal Order of the Polar Star by the Kingdom of Sweden, established in 1748 to recognize personal efforts for Sweden or for Swedish interests.

Johnson will launch her book at 7 p.m. Monday at the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs, 301 19th Ave. S., Mpls. In conversation with Lori Sturdevant, who covered state politics and government at the Star Tribune and is the author or co-author of 12 books about notable Minnesotans. Free, but registration required. Go to eventbrite.com/e/rise-to-the-challenge-book-launch-with-marlene-m-johnson-tickets-972429963197.

“Mysterious Tales of Old St. Paul: Three Cases Featuring Shadwell Rafferty”: by Larry Millett (University of Minnesota Press, $24.95)

Shadwell Rafferty is a big, friendly Irishman, co-owner of a saloon in St. Paul’s swanky Ryan Hotel in the late 1800s. He’s curious about things and knows a lot about what goes on in St. Paul thanks to gossip among drinkers he serves. This information helps when he turns part-time detective aided by his African-American friend and partner Thomas “Wash” Washington.

Courtesy of the University of Minnesota Press

Millett, a former Pioneer Press reporter and architecture critic, wrote nine novels featuring Rafferty and the great Sherlock Holmes. In the final book, “Rafferty’s Last Case” (2023), Rafferty solves his own murder thanks to the notes he kept. Now Millett gives us three novellas (shorter than a novel, longer than a short story) set before Rafferty met the Great Detective.

The first story, “Death in the News,” begins with someone tampering with the big sign above the Pioneer Press building, amusing staffs at rival papers The Globe and Dispatch. Not so amusing is the deaths of journalists. The last story, “The Gold King,” involves greed and an elaborate scheme for revenge. The middle story, “The Birdman of Summit Avenue,” is a gentler tale although it does involve a murder. A crabby old recluse has turned his acres into a haven for for birds. Then he meets a little girl from the West Side Flats who loves birds as much as he does and they become friends. When the man is accused of murdering a boy he’d chased from his property for shooting at the birds, Rafferty tries to find the real killer. It ends with a tender epilogue that’s unusual in crime fiction.

Larry Millett (Matt Schmidt)

Because Millett wrote about architecture for the Pioneer Press as well as books on the subject, he is able to bring vivid life to 19th-century St. Paul, describing lost buildings such as the Ryan Hotel and those still standing, including James J. Hill’s mansion. He has fun writing about rivalries between the city’s three newspapers. Characters range from bigoted businessmen who live on Summit Avenue to petty criminals. Appearing in all the stories are Rafferty’s friend Det. Pat Nolan, the only member of the St. Paul police department who knows what he’s doing, and Merry Mike Gallagher, the corrupt police chief who laughs when he pounds a miscreant with a hickory stick.

Millett will launch his book at a free reading at 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 6, at Saint City Catering, 218 E. Seventh St., St. Paul, presented by SubText Books.

“Cotton Grass: New and Selected Poems of the North”: by Bart Sutter (Nodin Press, $19.95)

I’ve hoped my nature poems might serve among what William Stafford called the “millions of intricate moves” to arrive at justice — in this case, a way of living in and with the natural world rather than destroying it — and ourselves — with unbridled cleverness, arrogance, and greed. The longer I lived with the poem ‘”Cotton Grass” the more the plant — growing in out-of-the-way places yet lovely to discover, self-propagating, and surprisingly tenacious — the more the plant seemed symbolic of poetry itself. — from “Cotton Grass”

Courtesy of Nodin Press

Bart Sutter says his collection of new and selected poems represents “a half century’s engagement with the nature of our region.” By that he means the environment in and around Duluth, where he lives, and northern Minnesota into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. A former Duluth poet laureate, Sutter has explored the back roads, trails, rivers, lakes and bogs of the North, returning with inspiration for poems about otters, moose and bobolinks to raccoons, as in this poem: “Abracadabra, out from behind/The trunk of a monumental white pine,/A foursome of small raccoons appears as one,/Shambling, stumbling, nudging and bumping/Each other, chirring and grumbling, muttering/and rumbling…”

“Cotton Grass” (a cloud-like plant that thrives in northern climes), is made up of selections from Sutter’s previous collections as well as new work. These are poems for people who think they don’t like poetry, easily understood and touching to us Minnesotans who share the poet’s love of the natural world and its opportunities, from canoeing to fishing and hiking.

Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn calls Sutter’s poetry “light years away (thank God) from post-modern tactics; one might even say Sutter’s aesthetic is pre-modern. There are many poems with rhyme and meter, an unabashed celebration of nature, and most amazingly, a healthy sampling of what we see little of these days, the affirmative poem.”

Bart Sutter (Courtesy of Nodin Press)

Sutter also writes essays, stories and plays. He is the only writer to win Minnesota Book Awards in three categories: “My Father’s War and Other Stories” in fiction, “The Book of Names” in poetry, and “Cold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map” in creative nonfiction. At the end of October he and his brother, Ross, will take their Sutter Brothers poetry-and-music show to 23 public libraries in northern Minnesota.

Sutter will introduce “Cotton Grass” at 7 p.m. Monday at Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls., with guest poet Tim Nolan. He’ll read at 2 p.m. Oct. 6 in the Cracked Walnut Literary Bridges series with Philip S. Bryant, Jody Lulich and Dylan Hicks at Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul.

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JULIE AYER: Member of the Minnesota Orchestra for 36 years introduces “Defying the Silence,” a labor history about how some of the world’s finest musicians walked a picket line and how local music lovers rallied around them. The musicians were locked out Oct. 1, 2012, starting the longest work stoppage in American orchestral labor history. The author is a professional violinist, arts advocate and historian. 6 p.m. Thursday, Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul.

CHAPMAN/COY: Ty Chapman, who writes children’s books and poetry, and John Coy, award-winning author of books for children and young adults, launch “Stokes: The Brief Career of the NBA’s First Black Superstar,” the story of Maurice Stokes, who played basketball in the mid-1950s and is not as well known as he should be in part because of a career-ending injury. 6 p.m. Tuesday, Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul. Register at redballoonbookshop.com.

DORER/HOMSTAD: Kari Lie Dorer and Torild Homstad discuss “Muus v. Muus,” a newly translated American edition of a book first published in Norway, about a wife’s lawsuit against her husband in 1880s Minnesota that shook the Norwegian-American community because in the eyes of the Norwegian Synod she had erred by not bringing her complaint to the congregation. She was not allowed to speak, even though in America laws regarding inheritance were on her side. Co-published with the Norwegian American Historical Association on the occasion of Northfield-based St. Olaf College’s sesquicentennial. Dorer holds the King Olav V Chair of Scandinavian American Studies at St. Olaf and Homstad has taught Norwegian at St. Olaf and the University of Minnesota. 7 p.m. Wednesday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls. Registration required: magersandquinn.com.

SARAH JAFFE: New Orleans-based writer/reporter and social critic introduces “From the Ashes,” about the politics of grief in an era marked by loss, showing us how we can find our humanity once more as we face issues ranging from COVID deaths to planetary disasters. In conversation with Rod Adams, founder/executive director for New Justice Project in Minnesota. 7 p.m. Tuesday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

(Courtesy of Milkweed Editions)

AMY/DAVE FREEMAN: Ely-based National Geographic Adventurers of the Year host a program titled Vote for the Environment, with Wendy Bennett, Alex Falconer, Larry Kraft and Becky Rom, inspired by the Freemans’ book “North American Odyssey: 12,000 Miles Across the Continent by Kayak, Canoe, and Dogsled.” Free. Hosted by publisher Milkweed Editions. 6 p.m. Wednesday, Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Mpls.

MINDY MEJIA: Discusses “A World of Hurt,” widely praised second in her Iowa Mysteries series (after “To Catch a Storm”), in which FBI informant Kara Johnson, who is immune from pain, teams up with Iowa police officer Max Summerlin, who is in constant pain, to bust a drug-trafficking operation. In Totally Criminal Cocktail Hour author series presented by Valley Bookseller of Stillwater. In conversation with Minnesota thriller writer Matt Goldman, 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Lowell Inn, 217 N. Main St., Stillwater. $10. Go to valleybookseller.com/event.

CRISTINA OXTRA: Minnesota Filipino American who writes books for young readers including the Teen Titans Go! Multiverse Adventure Series, launches her debut picture book, “What Lolo Wants,” dedicated to her grandfather who taught her how to draw. In celebration of Filipino American Heritage Month. 5 p.m. Saturday, Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul.

RANDY RIBAY: National Book Award finalist for “Patron Saints of Nothing” introduces his new young adult novel “Everything We Never Had,” about four generations of Filipino American boys grappling with identity, masculinity, and their fraught father-son relationships, published in celebration of Filipino American Heritage Month. In conversation with Cristina Oxtra. 6 p.m. Thursday, Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul. Register at redballoonbookshop.com.

MARCIE RENDON: Discusses her latest novel, “Where They Last Saw Her,” the story of a Native American woman who has had enough of disappearing Native women and empowers other women to stop abuse. 6 p.m. Wednesday, Union Depot, 214 E. Fourth St., presented by Story Line Books.

ELIOT SCHREFER: Introduces his new gender-bending young adult novel “The Brightness Between Us,” sequel to his American Library Association Stonewall Honor book “The Darkness Outside Us.” In conversation with Minnesota young adult author Anne Ursu. 6 p.m. Wednesday, Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul,. Register at redballoonbookshop.com.

STEPHEN SHASKAN: One of Minnesota’s favorite children’s writers introduces “Pizza and Taco: Best Christmas Ever!” in which the goofy pals decide it’s never too early to make their Christmas wish lists. All they have to do is be super-nice and well-behaved. 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul. Registration suggested: redballoonbookshop.com.

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“Marshmallow!” said digital learning specialist Jon Abrahamson to his Monday morning class, sending his fifth-graders shuffling to their tables, grabbing their Chromebook computers, ready for that day’s lesson in Digital Learning at William Byrne Elementary School.

The Burnsville students put their computers to use as part of the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District’s one-to-one laptop program, a measure that the district is asking voters to fund once again this fall.

Four public school districts in Dakota County are asking voters to approve funding bumps or renewals this election season, as school administrators say they need to balance their budgets amid expiring levies and rising costs in education.

Public school districts in Farmington, Lakeville and Inver Grove Heights are seeking approval for funding day-to-day operating expenses, while Burnsville-Eagan-Savage is seeking to renew a capital projects levy, known commonly in the district as the “tech levy.” This is how District 191 funds technology-related initiatives like student laptops, tech infrastructure and licensing of certain programs, among other items.

Even after a $2.2 billion investment in public schools from the state Legislature in 2023, many districts across the state have had to trim their budgets as they adjust to the end of COVID-era funding and rising operational costs. Older districts are dealing with the additional gut punch of declining enrollment, the student population headcount that is tied to state aid.

Attend any public school district budget presentation, regardless of the location, and the talk is bound to move toward a graph showing state public school funding since 2003 compared to inflation, and the gap between the two lines.

It’s a measure many school finance officials point to when beginning the conversation about asking taxpayers to approve additional funding through local property taxes. The gap of $1,356 per pupil leaves a different shortfall for each school district, but for Inver Grove Heights Community Schools, for example, it translates to about $5 million.

A fall 2024 graph shows state funding for Inver Grove Heights Community Schools since 2003 compared to inflation. (Courtesy of Inver Grove Heights Community Schools)

“We are grateful for that increased funding in the last biennium, but I think what that graph tells us is that we aren’t going to catch up with inflation in one biennium,” said Kirk Schneidawind, executive director of the Minnesota Schools Boards Association. “It was a great step forward, but this effort needs to continue to show a meaningful investment for our public schools.”

Statewide, 54 school districts this fall will ask their local taxpayers to approve an operating levy, capital projects levy or a construction bond, according to figures provided by the MSBA.

Of the 331 public school districts in Minnesota, MSBA figures found that about 73 percent of all districts have a taxpayer-approved operating referendum in some form.

“We used to call it an ‘excess levy.’ Now it has become such an important part of school district budgets,” Schneidawind said. “That in itself speaks to the larger economic pressures that our districts are feeling over the last two decades. (Levies) have become an essential element for our school districts to fund their operations.”

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Asked if is this is a sign of a state funding problem or just healthy local engagement, Catrin Wigfall, an education policy fellow at the conservative-minded think tank Center of the American Experiment, replied that the issue is multi-layered; identifying what has kept pace with inflation is important, because overall state revenue has.

Additionally, she said, it doesn’t help if new state aid comes attached to new state mandates before it hits the schools’ budget sheets.

“If the districts are making the case at the local level that the referendum is needed, being transparent about what budget decisions have gotten them to this point, and showing their community how the money will be spent, and the community approves, I see that as healthy local engagement,” Wigfall said.

Farmington: Another try, different way of asking

In Farmington, the school district is asking taxpayers to replace its existing levy of almost $700 per student with a larger levy of $1,556.15 per student. This levy would last 10 years, and would be tied to inflationary increases, as well. The current 10-year levy is set to expire at the end of 2025.

If approved, property taxes for a Farmington resident would rise about $35.50 per month or $425 a year, based on a home valued at $350,000, according to district estimates.

Last year, the community rejected a similar operating levy question in Farmington by about 53 percent against to 47 percent in favor.

District officials said they received feedback from community members that the question last year may have been a bit convoluted — it involved asking for a lower amount at the beginning of the levy, and increasing that amount as other debt fell off the district’s books. The Farmington Board of Education last year also brought forward that levy question a few months before Election Day. This year, the board made that vote in the spring, giving the district more time to speak with residents.

When the 2023 levy did not pass, the district chose to use $2.7 million of one-time funds to hold off any additional budget cuts. But if this year’s effort fails, the district has estimated needing to make reductions next year of about $4 million from the district’s $96 million budget. Before using those one-time funds last budget season, Farmington schools have had to make budget cuts in each of the previous three years.

Farmington Area Public Schools Superintendent Jason Berg said those reductions would likely include reducing support staff positions, classroom teacher positions, eliminating fifth-grade band and post-secondary learning options at Farmington High School.

Berg said last year the district was able to be a bit creative in developing the operating levy question, but with the current funding source expiring at the end of 2025, that time is running low.

“This year, we are getting backed up against the wall,” Berg said.

Inver Grove Heights: ‘It’s for survival’

That’s similar to the refrain of school officials in Inver Grove Heights.

Last year, Inver Grove Heights schools asked taxpayers two funding questions, but were rebuffed on both, by 53 percent and 54 percent. The first question would have added $410 per student to the operating levy in order to hold off classroom staffing cuts, and offer K-8 world language classes, among other items. The second question last year would have added $110 per student to provide for mental health and school safety support.

This fall, voters will choose whether to increase Inver Grove Heights Schools’ operating levy by $627 per student, tied to inflationary increases, for the next decade. That would bring the district’s levy to $1,337.

This increase would cost taxpayers about $13.75 per month on a $317,250 home, or the average home value in the district.

They are coming back to taxpayers this fall after completing a survey with national research firm Morris Leatherman Co., finding that 75 percent of respondents would support increasing the district’s operating levy. Inver Grove Heights schools currently receive $710 per student, more than $1,000 below the per pupil operating levies of nearby school districts in Rosemount, South St. Paul and West St. Paul. Those districts tally per pupil funding of $1,887, $1,990 and $2,158, respectively.

“It’s for survival,” Inver Grove Heights Schools Superintendent Dave Bernhardson said. “State funding hasn’t kept pace with inflation since 2003. We can’t control that. We can lobby for that, and we can also ask our local residents to help patch that gap with what they said they could afford.”

Inver Grove Heights cut $1.8 million ahead of the 2024-25 school year, and if this levy fails, officials are predicting another shortfall of $2 million.

Bernhardson said those reductions could result in elementary class sizes of more than 30 students, with middle school and high school sections seating more than 40 students.

If the measure passes, the district will be able to keep those teachers on staff, as well as hire an additional school resource officer, and update security cameras in the district, among other safety equipment.

Lakeville North: Growth in enrollment, growth in needs

When Lakeville North High School counselors Bryce Hoffa, Jennie Peitz and Isaac McClosky open up their daily schedules to speak with students, the online forms quickly fill up. The 30-minute blocks are grabbed, one after the other, until the day is full.

So it goes for the counseling team at Lakeville North, whose district added three counselors to each of its two high schools this year.

“We have been steady busy, all day, every day, which is great for us,” Hoffa said. “We are connecting with students and we are fulfilling and supporting their needs in the moment.”

The counselors focus on three main domains: college applications and searches, general social-emotional mental health support, and career and post-secondary planning.

Bringing in more student support positions is a large focus of Lakeville’s levy plans, said Lakeville Area Schools spokesperson Grace Olson.

“It’s not as much about budget reductions for us. It’s more about knowing that we are continuing to grow. We’ve grown so much without adding enough support,” Olson said.

Voters will choose whether to increase the Lakeville district’s general operating levy by $300 per student, tied to inflationary increases, for the next decade. This increase would total about $4 million annually. Lakeville Area Schools receives about $1,671 per student from their current operating levies.

For homeowners of a $465,000 house — the average home value in the district — the new levy would be a tax increase of about $13 per month, according to district estimates.

If approved, Lakeville school officials said they would add nine counselor/social worker positions spread across three middle schools, and also one more counselor to each high school. They would also plan to add a full-time art and music teacher to each elementary school, among other items.

Last year, Lakeville schools asked voters two levy questions — one to fund operations for newly opened Highview Elementary and another to fund an increase of $250 per student for many of the same items listed in this year’s levy effort. The first question passed with almost 56 percent support, but the second measure failed by less than 1 percent, or 142 votes.

The administration of Lakeville Area Schools is also currently in transition. Douglas Van Zyl resigned his superintendent post in August, with Assistant Superintendent Emily McDonald currently serving as acting superintendent. Michael Baumann, who previously served as superintendent of Lakeville schools from 2017 to 2022, will serve as interim superintendent beginning Sept. 30.

Lakeville school board members and McDonald referred referendum questions to Olson.

Burnsville-Eagan-Savage: Renewing digital support

Fifth-grade students in Jon Abrahamson’s Digital Learning class, where the children are learning how to “be a responsible digital leader,” at William Byrne Elementary School in Burnsville on Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. As part of District 191’s technology levy, each student receives a Chromebook laptop to use between home and school. The taxpayer-approved tech levy provides about $4.7 million for technology initiatives across the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district. (Elliot Mann / Special to the Pioneer Press)

Back in the Burnsville classroom, Abrahamson bounced from group to group, lending a hand when needed as his students worked on a project about digital leadership, or making positive choices when online or using technology.

The skills learned in his class will give the students a strong foundation with using technology as they move toward using their laptops in their other classes more and more, he said.

District leaders at Burnsville-Eagan-Savage schools are asking voters to renew the expiring capital projects levy for a 10-year period, beginning in 2026. The levy will provide nearly $4.7 million each year, for an approximate total of about $47 million over the life of the levy. There would be no immediate property tax change, since the levy is a renewal.

Last April, the District 191 school board found that community members strongly supported renewal of the levy, per their own survey results provided by the Morris Leatherman Co. In the survey, 89 percent of respondents supported renewing the “tech levy.”

Superintendent Theresa Battle said the funds will be used to implement cybersecurity measures to protect the district’s data, as online attacks against school districts have been more common in recent years. The levy will also support the district’s use of popular educational programming like Schoology, Seesaw and WeVideo, in addition to continuing the initiative to provide every student with a laptop.

Battle said providing each student with a laptop allows students to access information at their fingertips but also allows instructors to have immediate feedback from how their students are performing. In a growing digital age, online access is becoming a basic utility for teaching and learning.

“It is an opportunity to personalize learning,” Battle said.

Levies vs. bonds

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There are a few different taxpayer-approved funding mechanisms; the following will be on ballots this November:

Operating levies: Used for general, daily operating expenses within a district such as classroom staff, materials or programming changes.

Capital project levies: Used with a more limited scope, including items related to technology, building maintenance, safety and security infrastructure and similar items.

Construction bonds: Used to build or renovate buildings and district-owned spaces.

A common axiom used by many school finance officials to help differentiate between these mechanisms is “levies are for learning, bonds are for building.”