SARTELL - The Community Task Force made their official pitch for a new high school to the Sartell-St. Stephen school board tonight (Monday).

Jeremy Snoberger is a task force member and a parent of student in the district. He says every building in the district is already at, or near, capacity for students.

Classrooms that were built for a different style of teaching are being used, to try to do something new. It's working, they make it work, but it could be so much better.

He says there's also a need to reconfigure the classrooms for a modern way of teaching.

Twentieth century was. let's pack as many kids in one classroom. It was a factory approach. It's what we've done everywhere. Twenty-first century learning is the idea of really creating an environment where kids can learn at their own pace, and their own speed.

The task force is recommending the district spend up to $158.3 million over the next 10-to-15 years; $45 million on maintenance upgrades, $25.6 million on educational upgrades, and $87.7 million on new construction - including building a new high school.

Superintendent Jeff Scwiebert says he expects the school board to make a decision on the timeline sometime in January.

If they decide that they'd like to have feedback from the community in terms of a vote, if we're going to do that in this May window, we've got to get moving relatively rapidly. First off they have to decide what are we going to do, and then number two, if we're going to ask for dollars we've got to ask them when are we going to do that.

Schwiebert says they basically have two voting timelines - May and November - over the next two years, if the school board chooses to bring a bond referendum to the voters.

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