By Teri Knight, News Director
Bids for reconstruction/remodeling of the Greenvale School for Early Childhood Education came in a little higher than anticipated. Northfield School Superintendent Dr. Matt Hillmann commented that when they sold the bonds for the project, they started earning interest, “we’re anticipating to earn over a $1 million in interest on the bond sale that we did last January. And so, even though the construction costs for the renovation of Greenvale Park are estimated to be about $400,000 more than planned, we’ve already earned a half a million dollars in interest which allows us to do that project as we had
bid it”. Last Thursday the School Board approved $2.25 million in contracts for the renovation. Programs at Northfield Community Resource Center and Longfellow will move into the building. Full time licensed child care will be available as well as preschool, Early childhood family education, early special education, community education and Adult Basic Education. In a partnership with the Community Action Center, there will be a food pantry for needed food services to provide for the north side of town. The district received 22 bids for the work. Of the nine approved packages, three companies are within a 30-mile radius of the project. The plan is to move in before the 20/21 school year.
Super Tuesday and party affiliation exposure
It’s Super Tuesday, for the Republicans, there’s just one name, President Trump. District 20 Senator Rich Draheim encouraged people to vote but added, “when you go vote the national parties will know what party you voted for and we’re trying to change that. It’s a little late this year but hopefully we won’t have to do that again”. He believes it’s nobody’s business who you vote for and would like to see that change. Rep. Lippert commented, that he voted for a bill that would place strict restrictions on what your corresponding party of preference could do with your data, and also allow voters to opt-out of sharing that information. The Senate did not move it forward. Lippert added that there’s a 10 week window for a new law to be enacted before the Minnesota Secretary of State will be forced to send the primary data to state party officials.For today, several candidates on the Democratic ballot have dropped out of the race including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Tom Steyer with both Klobuchar and Buttigieg endorsing former VP Joe Biden. Vote for a candidate still in the running. Polls are open now till 8pm. Find your polling location on the Minnesota Secretary of State website.
Local LIONS Club works with School leadership providing $ for Kid Sight and more
Brian Rykhus is the Vice President of the local Lions Club and the District Representative. They are the largest service club in the world with over 1.4 million members and more than 200 countries represented. The main goal of the Lions is to eradicate preventable blindness.Locally, he said, “for many years we’ve been working with the Northfield School District providing either free or low cost vision exams to needy kids in the Northfield School District”. It’s called Kid Sight. They’ve contributed over $20,000 to provide eyeglasses for kids. Rykhus added that one area they’re exploring with the School District is, “small child vision screenings at the preschool, kindergarten, 1st grade level and either providing or contributing towards providing some equipment to do that early screening of children”. That would include children from 3 months to six years old. For the last five years they’ve partnered with HealthFinders to do the same for adults. Most recently the local Lions installed new playground equipment at the Lions Pavilion near Veterans Memorial Park and intend on expanding the playground. The local Lions Club is always looking for new members and they also invite youth to become involved by becoming a Leo. They meet for lunch the 2nd and 4th Monday every month at the Northfield Golf Club.
