(Jackson, Mn.)– Voters in the Jackson County Central School District Tuesday defeated an operating referendum and a capital projects levy. Interim Superintendent Dr. Mike Neubeck says they’re going to have some difficult decisions to make now…
“You know this year we’re already going to be $450,000 of deficit spending, so what does that look like for next year? How does that carry over and so forth? And then we’ll come up with kind of a number of what we need to look at for adjustments either in budget reductions or also in revenue increases. And then the admin team will get together and come up with recommendations to the board. I’m hoping that by late February or mid March that we would be able to make recommendations to the board for those budget adjustments for next year so that we could have a balanced budget for the ’26-’27 school year.”
Dr. Neubeck adds there are some things on the horizon that will further complicate JCC’s finances…
“We’ve done some things in the past to kind of maintain balance and that’s why we’ve been able to grow our fund balance some, but now we’re at the point where inflation is just overwhelming for the $460 per student that we get, and so that’s why we’re starting to see some deficit spending. And we’re also expected to go down by 16 students over the next three to four years. That doesn’t help because that’s a lot of our funding as well.”
He attributes Tuesday’s failure of the referendums to the downturn in the rural economy and significant increases in tax askings being proposed by the cities and Jackson county…
“Economics has been very tough in the area and continues to be. Unfortunately schools are the only entity that has to go out and ask voters to approve and it’s one time voters can say no, and they did, so we move on.”
Dr. Neubeck says they’ll likely bring the measure back to voters in another year.
The operating referendum would have replaced the current $460 per pupil levy that’s set to expire in 2028 with a new rate of $820 per pupil, plus annual inflation adjustments, for 10 years. The capital projects levy would have provided $250,000 a year for 10 years for things such as school safety, technology, facility improvements, transportation and curriculum resources.
