Southern Minn. school district dissolved
Voters in four southern Minnesota school districts have approved a plan to divide one of the districts into the other three.
The McLeod West district is shutting down next month because of financial problems. Voters decided yesterday to consolidate McLeod into the three neighboring districts: Buffalo Lake-Hector, Glencoe-Silver Lake and Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop.
Residents voted overwhelmingly to approve a plan the four districts had agreed upon. If the vote had failed, the district would have been dissolved by the McLeod County Commission.
McLeod West will be $2.5 million in the red at the end of the school year, which is more than two-thirds of its overall budget.
The vote needed to pass separately in each district for the consolidation to be approved, which is what happened. In the McLeod West district, the question passed 779-107; the approval in Buffalo Lake-Hector was 552-16; in Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop, 625-43; in Glencoe-Silver Lake, 1159-86.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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