Aitkin residents to vote on replacing Rippleside Elementary School

AITKIN — Independent School District No. 1 will have a special election Nov. 4 on whether to build a new elementary school in Aitkin.

The outcome of the bond referendum will determine whether the district will build a new pre-kindergarten through sixth grade school to replace the 70-year-old Rippleside Elementary School, which has several issues from health risks to outdated utilities.

The first question on the ballot will ask voters for a property tax increase to fund the school’s construction and a new transportation center for buses. The project would cost $59.44 million, down from $64.44 million due to a $5 million grant from the Minnesota Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation.

The second question, which will only pass if the first question passes, will ask for another increase for a community wellness and recreation center attached to the new school. The wellness center would cost another $6 million, bringing the total cost to $65.44 million.

The property tax increase would be $228 per year for the school and $24 per year for the wellness center for a home valued at $175,000. The increase would be $432 for the school and $48 for the wellness center for a home valued at $300,000.

The School Board and the school district are looking for other sources of funding, said Superintendent Dan Stifter. However, most grants require a plan or confirmation that a project will happen, which means most other avenues for funding will only be available after the election if the referendum passes. The IRRR will not award the $5 million grant if the referendum does not pass.

The new school and transportation center would be built on land the district bought in 2018 as part of a larger plan to eventually move all schools and facilities to one campus. The school would use up to 90 acres of the more than 200 acres of land.

Old school problems, new school solutions

The new school would replace Rippleside, which has old security systems, water damage and poor air quality and temperature control. The transportation center would replace the current bus garage, which shares space with the neighboring rail tracks and a local oil company.

Rippleside also has asbestos under some of its older floor tiles and carpets, which could pose a health issue if removed and disturbed, Stifter said. Renovating the old flooring would require asbestos abatement procedures, which would make replacing the flooring more expensive.

In previous referendums for a new school, voters opted to repair and renovate Rippleside instead, but that is no longer a feasible option, said Cindi Hills, chair of the School Board.

“I think that everybody is starting to recognize now that we just are really at the end of the life cycle of this building,” she said. “And the best use of our money is to is to start fresh and to have a building that we know will last and will serve our students for many, many, many decades.”

Renovating Rippleside as it stands would cost $25 million to $35 million, though that would not fix all the school’s persisting issues, Stifter said.

“There’d still be some other challenges that we are not able to address, and we’d still be in a building that's roughly 75 years old,” he said.

Enrollment in the district has steadily declined in recent years, following the overall trend of rural schools. The number of students in the district was nearly 1,200 in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years, then started to decline in the 2016-17 school year, according to the School Board in 2024. Total district enrollment hit 1,000 students in the 2022-23 school year.

Rippleside had 463 out of the 995 students in the district during the 2023-24 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Total enrollment will likely drop to less than 800 students by 2034, though elementary education may hold steady around 458 to 470 students, according to the Board’s 2024 projections.

The smaller student numbers are for a variety of reasons, such as smaller family sizes, and are consistent with the School Board’s population predictions from 10 years ago, Hills said.

The new school would take class sizes into account, Hills said. Instead of four smaller classrooms per grade level, there would be three classrooms with adequate space as well as spaces for tutoring and support spaces for students with special needs or mental health issues.

“People will commonly say, ‘If your class sizes used to be 80 or 90 and now they're going down to 60, do you really need to build a new school?’” Hills said. “And my answer to that is, ‘Yes, we do need to have adequate spaces to be able to teach our next generation of students.’ And what we're focusing on here is, we're really right-sizing the classroom.”

Aside from having enough space and up-to-date utilities, the new school will not be something extravagant, Stifter said.

“We're not adding a whole bunch of bells and whistles other than the bells and whistles that schools should have,” he said. “The infrastructure, the heating, the ventilation, drains, all that stuff right now — those are almost bells and whistles in our elementary school, because they're not always working.”

Students and staff would continue learning and teaching at Rippleside while the new school is built and move over to the new building once it is complete. There would be no need for reenrollment or rehiring.

A community-centered project

The community wellness and recreation center in the second question of the referendum would be attached to the school with a separate entrance for the community. The multi-purpose wellness center would include an indoor walking track and full-size basketball courts, which would also serve as extra gym space for the school. It would also have spaces for student clubs and community groups and meetings.

Members of the community sometimes try to use Rippleside’s two small gyms and the high school’s walking track, but with physical education classes and other school activities, those spaces are not always accessible, Stifter said.

“It’s just providing a safe space for people to go and gather,” he said.

The referendum is not just a project to better education but the community as a whole, Hills said. Stifter has had conversations with members of the community, local government and employers in the area such as Riverwood Healthcare, assessing the needs of the community and how the referendum could bring more housing and jobs to Aitkin.

“It’s going to benefit our entire community, and that’s a piece that we never did before, was really partnering with all the different community and business agencies,” Hills said. “I think that’s the piece that’s different this time.”