Cloquet Rotary Club member and Superintendent of Cloquet Public Schools, Ken Scarbrough, presented today's program. He spoke about the issues involved in the referendum coming up February 10 to build a new middle school in Cloquet

 

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In the past 10 years since Ken has been in Cloquet, attendance in the elementary schools has increased 200%. They are running out of space and some elementary programs are now held in local churches. Moreover, the middle school is 95 years old and requiring more and more repairs. The question is whether to fix these deterioration issues now and replace the school later or replace the school now. Now is more cost effective. For the last 2 years these facilities issues have been discussed and a plan for alterations to the elementary schools and building a new middle school has been proposed. The plan for the middle school is to use land the school district already owns on the high school property and build a new middle school adjacent to the high school. The new school would have a swimming pool and an 800 seat auditorium. More details can be found on the Cloquet Public Schools website under Building Bond, such as what your new property taxes would be. Russ Smith, former Superintendent of Cloquet Public Schools, and now on a committee to promote this referendum, added that Cloquet students have a very high performance state wide. Steve Micke is also on the committee and he added that volunteers are needed to contact voters before the Feb 10 voting date.