Steve Sorensen, a retired St. Cloud VA Medical Center employee, upset school board Chairwoman Sigrid Hedman-Dennis in the August primary. Hedman-Dennis got enough votes to advance to the general election and says she is working hard this fall to earn another two years on the board after serving for seven.
Sorensen, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has said previously that the schools need to return to the basics and that if he were elected he would be looking for ways to reduce the administrative budget, which will cost almost $4 million of the $97 million the district plans to spend this year.
His more controversial comments include a suggestion that Muslim students take their prayer breaks in “tin huts,” and that the language immersion programs at St. Cloud’s Madison and Clearview elementary schools be eliminated so the focus can be on teaching English.
“We have too much where we are not being fair to the entire student population,” Sorensen said in an interview in May.
Hedman-Dennis, who is serving her second year as board chairwoman, said Sorensen has made this campaign about one issue — race. She sees the job of a school-board member as multifaceted.
“Our children should not be at the dispute of racial discrimination or any contention that they are doing something that isn’t appropriate,” Hedman-Dennis said. “I don’t want this to be a single-issue race.”
The rapid increase of nonwhite students in the school district is definitely among the issues. Almost one-fourth of the student population in St. Cloud schools is nonwhite. That has been boosted by a Somali immigrant population that is mostly Muslim, a religion that requires special dietary practices and short time out of class for prayer that federal law requires the district accommodate.
Some Somali students have complained they have been harassed at school, prompting a federal investigation that is ongoing. Investigators visited last week.
Superintendent Bruce Watkins has ordered an evaluation of the district’s religion-in-school policies to see if any updates are needed.
More issues
Take those issues out, and the next school board still will have plenty to deal with. Most projections suggest a budget shortfall. The board, including Hedman-Dennis, in September voted 5-2 to set a preliminary tax collection that increases 24 percent from 2010 to 2011. That gives the board an option in December to finalize that amount and use the additional tax dollars collected to pay its commitment to insurance benefits for retired employees. It also would help avoid budget reductions next year.
Hedman-Dennis said the board could reduce the levy in December, but she said it also wanted to be careful about the district’s financial situation.
“That means sometimes taking a tough vote. That was a tough vote,” Hedman-Dennis said.
Hedman-Dennis, 56, decided to run for school board in 2003 after hearing the speaker at graduation explain that she was a teacher who was going to be laid off. She ran among more than a dozen candidates and won one of three seats with St. Cloud lawyer Jerry Von Korff and retired educator Bruce Mohs.
In her seven years on the board, Hedman-Dennis says the board is more transparent, has developed better processes, is more decisive and has set things in place that should help improve student achievement.
Background
She grew up in Minnesota in a number of cities, the daughter of a nurse and a teacher who became a school superintendent. She is a professor of nursing education at the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University, combining her parents’ professions.
Hedman-Dennis was a pediatric nurse in Rochester, St. Louis Park, Rockford, Ill., and St. Cloud before she decided she had seen too many children die.
With Hedman-Dennis on the board, the district has hired three superintendents, including Bruce Watkins twice. He replaced Steve Jordahl, who resigned two years after the board hired him. Jordahl said the political pressures of running a district with 9,500 students and $100 million budget were too much.
The district opened Kennedy Community School in St. Joseph, a combined elementary and middle school in 2008. Voters rejected an effort to renew a property tax increase in 2007 and the board decided to rely on reserves to maintain programs. Voters approved a tax increase a year later providing much-needed additional dollars into the district budget.
The board has worked to set targets for student achievement as it tries to close a gap in some grades of up to 40 percentage points between the success of white and minority students.
“Because the board set the vision cards, we can hold people accountable,” Hedman-Dennis said of the district’s efforts to improve student achievement.
The district was among the first to be part of state alternative teacher pay program, then was dropped when its plan did not meet state requirements and the district could not reach a compromise with teachers to continue the program.
The district also has missed the state deadline of January for settling teachers contracts two straight times, costing it more than $200,000 each year. The most recent settlement, completed in August, was among the lowest increase in cost in recent history.
Hedman-Dennis almost didn’t run for re-election. She considered running for an open seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives and chose the two-year term in case she wants to consider that next time.
Sorensen, who is 60 and has no previous connection to St. Cloud schools, won by a convincing margin in the primary that included a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia.
Hedman-Dennis said she has met Sorensen twice, once at a voters forum this month.
“I think our views are quite different in the reasons and rationale that we would want to do this job,” Hedman-Dennis said.