School bond referendumoneof many in history of SouthWashington County

By Joseph Back

As the Journal goes to press this week results are still out on the school bond referendum, but should it pass South Washington County Schools will be in for a series of changes, planned to occur within the next few years.

It won’t be the first time. The narrative of bursting enrollment is one that first began over sixty years ago, when what was then referred to in The Reporter from that day as “our situation”— meaning suburban development and burgeoning student enrollment in what just recently had been a rural area—sent voters to the polls to approve or else not approve four new elementary schools: Grove, Pullman, Pine Hill, and Woodbury.

At the time the vote was 83.29 percent in favor—being 2,483 in favor and 2,981 against—with the amount in question $4 million in construction funds.

Using the handy U.S. Inflation Calculator at www. usinvflationcalculator.com, we might state with relative confidence that a similar referendum would cost around $40.73 million today—the dollar not quite buying, just what it used to.

As to the 1959 bond referendum, the question was approved, but not without controversy. Before it was over Woodbury would be left asking why it was last in construction plans, while Grove Elementary would later be sold to the National Guard, some two decades after being built. A new Cottage Grove Elementary would later be built elsewhere, though controversy as to whether the people’s naming preference had prevailed would hit the ‘Letters to the Editor’ section of the South Washington County Bulletin.

Through the decades and as Cottage Grove grew up alongside Woodbury, while river towns on either side carried on, the news being chronicled as it happened, from 1960 when the farmers east of Highway 61 reportedly tried to break away, to the early 2000s, when the farms turned into residential housing developments named for them made East Ridge High a needed addition, with middle schools built as well

See SCHOOL Page 2

Serving students in southwest Cottage Grove as well as St. Paul Park, Pullman Elementary was the partial result of a $4 million bond referendum over six decades ago in October of 1959. It would see construction of new bathrooms along with renovation work, should the August 9 bond referendum pass, with results still out at press time. Photo by Joseph Back. SCHOOL

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along the way. Today almost 63 years after that first bond referendum, and pending the outcome of the present bond referendum, the question remains: is South Washington County’s past predictive of its future, or might voters choose a detour this time, shifting direction towards a different horizon?

That’s a question, best left to the voters. Next week, the results of the school bond referendum— for and against.