Harold Remme did not get into education to be a politician.

  But now, as superintendent of New Ulm Public Schools, politics have found him.

  For years, New Ulm has suffered declining enrollments and, subsequently, declining state aid in terms of per pupil funding. Remme has had to slash millions of dollars from the budget during the last several years and was forced to close the middle school this year.

  An approved operating referendum in November was all that saved the district from another round of budget and staff reductions that, Remme said, students could ill afford.

  “But any time you go through a referendum process, it creates a situation where there’s a cloud of doubt about what to believe,” Remme said. “The whole process becomes divisive.”

  Remme said the current funding situation has necessitated a continual whirlwind of levy referendums. Superintendents, he said, are left to explain to the public why schools need more money and why the public needs to provide it. And with the complexity of state financial formulas and the intricacies of per pupil funding, Remme said being a superintendent has become more about money and less about students.

  “I feel a superintendent’s job is to be an educational leader, not a professional fundraiser,” Remme said. “ The state should have the responsibility of making funding decisions.”

  St. Clair Supt. Tom Bruels agreed: “The unfortunate part is when a district is in the position of passing a levy, the superintendent is not looked at as an instructional leader, but as a tax man. That’s not a role most educators want to be in.”

  But it’s a role superintendents and school admin-istrators are familiar with, said Lake Crystal Welcome Memorial Supt. Les Norman.

  The politics of school funding have hit Lake Crystal hard. Almost a decade’s worth of attempted bond referendums to build a new high school created rip­ples of resentment in the community that still rever­berate today. The closings of a couple of community schools — the last in Garden City — also led to hard feelings.

  And now, there’s a new challenge.

  After years of declining enrollment, LCWM’s population of preschool kids is booming. But because kindergarten students, for instance, receive about half the per pupil state funding as secondary students, a district can increase its enrollments and still lose state funding.

  The result, Norman said, is a community in which schools are pitted against taxpayers in a show­down for funding. And the superintendent is left to clean up the political mess afterward.

  “ These are just realities that we as a community, as a region and as a state need to get a grip on,” Norman said. “Are we going to do something about education? If not, then we need to decrease our expectations.”

Copyright 2008 Mankato Free Press