SAUK RAPIDS -- For the second time in a year residents in the Sauk Rapids-Rice school district are being asked to approve a building referendum, and it has residents on both sides of the issue speaking out.

Dan Johnson has lived in Sauk Rapids for over 10 years. He has started a Facebook page titled "Close Enrollment: Vote No". The page has nearly 600 followers so far.  He says it is not an organized group effort, but more grassroots.

Johnson says 850 students from the St. Cloud school district are open enrolled in Sauk Rapids-Rice. He says by closing open enrollment, they could begin to solve the space crunch issue.

I think what the residents would like to see is if you want to attend our schools, please move to our community and help us pay for it.  I think that's a very reasonable argument.

Johnson says open enrolled students currently in the district would be allowed to stay.

Meanwhile, another Facebook page titled "Vote Yes: ISD 47" has over 300 followers. They say open enrollment has benefitted the district with more than $48 million in the last 15 years.

Six-hundred-thousand-dollars of the over $93.1 million referendum would be used to improve security at the schools in the district. But, Johnson says, he believes the school district already has the money to do that, after running a budget surplus for the past four years in a row.

We could spend that money tomorrow.  We have $18.6 million in the undesignated fund.  We could spend that tomorrow to fix those issues and they are not.

On the flip side, Johnson says he's not opposed to everything that's in the levy question.

After the last referendum I spend significant time with school board officials at meetings urging the board to put Pleasantview in a spot that is can pass with the voters.  Don't mix it up with wants and needs.  Put Pleasantview on its own question.

The levy question includes nearly $37 million to rebuild Pleasantview. It is part of just one larger question this year. Last year Pleasantview was a stand-alone question, but it was the second question on the ballot. Back in May of 2017, the first question failed by 332 votes and the second question -- or the Pleasantview question -- failed by 347 votes.

The school district has scheduled a series of informational meetings before election day if you would like to know more about the referendum.

WJON Video Story with Sauk Rapids-Rice school leaders. 

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