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FAIRMONT - A potential new referendum was discussed for the first time at Tuesday’s Fairmont School Board meeting.
The previous $21.7 million referendum, which included an addition to the fine arts learning center, a secure entry and office addition, renovations to locker rooms along with interior and exterior updates to buildings, including windows, and capital maintenance projects districtwide, failed to secure enough votes in November of 2025.
This comes ahead of their Operations Committee meeting today, Wednesday, where Superintendent Andy Traetow said they will start discussions of potentially bringing a building bond referendum to the public again.
"State statute does require us to make some adjustments to that, whether they be in the scope of the project or exactly how the question is structured," he said. "Those will be considerations that will be presented."
Before this meeting, Traetow and Business Manager Jessica Korte met with representatives from ICS, who did the facility needs assessment and are currently overseeing the upcoming roofing, HVAC and fire retention updates.
"They are looking at, right now, preparing information for inflationary adjustments and adjustments to lead times to help give us a better picture of what that might look like moving forward," Traetow said. "Should you, as a board, decide to move forward right now, we’re in the time frame where we can still meet all the requirements and guidelines for a February 2027 vote for consideration of similar projects that were sought out for support about a year ago."
This deadline is the end of September. Traetow said meeting that deadline would not, in turn, require them to go out for a vote, but they would need to file with the Minnesota Department of Education for enough time to get the review and comment back for a final decision.
"More will be included in the operations committee minutes, as well as discussed at future board meetings," Traetow said.
After student handbooks were approved at the last school board meeting, staff handbooks were brought forth for consideration at this meeting.
Added to the elementary school handbook this year is a new safety vest rule, where when students are taken off campus, all accompanying adults must wear a safety vest. Safety vests must also be worn by one adult during a fire drill and for recess or any other outside activity.
"So the responsible adult, whether it be on the playground, walking from place to place, is easily identifiable to know, and kids can know who to go to for questions or help as they need it," Traetow said.
A new item has been added as a requirement for all classrooms. Alongside the four Cardinal expectations, Top 20 training posters, the daily class schedule, learning targets and signs pointing to a calm town or take a break area in a room, emergency access routes and a class list by the door to use during emergencies and drills have been added to that list of requirements.
An adjustment shared between the elementary and high school is that all staff members and adults during school hours must wear their ID badges at all times throughout the day.
Traetow said a lot of it is just reemphasis on some of the things already in the handbook, adjacent to some of their summer training.
"We’re going to reemphasize the wearing of staff ID badges in the building to ensure proper identification," he said. "That’ll also be in place for our substitute teachers and visitors to the building to avoid any confusion of who has an intent and purpose to be in our buildings. With our emergency response protocols, we are updating some of our language to be more clear for our drill purposes and things of that nature."
These handbooks were approved unanimously.
In other news:
-- Traetow went through the systems that have been, or will be, fully updated for the upcoming school year, including Skyward for student information, Bound for activities and CER, Cybernut for anti-phishing, Red Rover for absence management and time-tracking and Brightly for technology and maintenance requests.
-- The employment of Heather Willemssen as an elementary teacher and extension of Kaitlyn Freese's contract from a long-term substitute to a teacher for the full school year was approved by the school board. The resignation from elementary teacher Nyla Anderson was also approved.