WILLMAR — The Southwest West Central Service Cooperative last week asked the Minnesota Legislature to direct funding toward new facilities for students with severe learning and/or behavioral issues in Midwest Minnesota. We requested them to consider this matter.
SWWC Executive Director Cliff Carmody spoke on Tuesday, Oct. 10, during the Minnesota House of Representatives Capital Investments Committee’s social tour at Ridgewater College in Willmar, where a $6 million investment to build a teaching and learning center in New London was announced. Submitted a request for assistance.
The total budget for construction of the special education facility, “Setting Four,” is $12 million, Carmody said. Setting The four facilities serve students with severe disabilities diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and/or students with behavioral problems.
“What this actually means is that all of these children have IEPs (Individual Education Plans). Most of them have behavioral disorders (autism, we can’t think of them that way). We serve them in a non-school setting,” Carmody said. “Their disabilities are such that they cannot function in a traditional school setting.”
State Rep. Urdahl, R-Grove City, the committee’s minority leader, said students who use these facilities have serious behavioral problems, including jamming light sockets and throwing chairs at windows. I commented that it was.
“The schools themselves need to be built differently to accommodate these students and provide them with an education,” he said.
SWWC is one of nine service cooperatives in Minnesota, serving 18 counties in southwestern and midwestern Minnesota, Carmody said. Approximately 54 public schools are served by the cooperative, and its annual budget is approximately $52 million.
“One of the things we do is special education, which is about 75 percent of our total budget, which makes us a little bit unique as a statewide service cooperative,” Carmody said. explained. “One of the important things to remember about service cooperatives is that we receive no direct funding from the state, zero. There is no direct funding from the state.”
Carmody said the cooperative is funded with special education funds from each member school district. He pointed out that if members of a cooperative do not like the service being provided, they will stop paying for that service.
Tom Cherveny/West Central Tribune
The cooperative currently has six facilities in the region. The new facility in New London will replace Wilmar’s current facility in his three-story building on the MinnWest campus. Mr Carmody told the committee the current facilities were “grossly inadequate and inadequate”. Last year, it was discovered that there was mold on the first floor, so the school is currently trying to provide education for nearly 45 children on two floors. ”
Previously, SWWC received $5 million to upgrade its site in Cosmos.
“I know there’s a lot of needs, there’s a lot of projects, but I’ll say this about that $5 million. This is the most $5 million the state of Minnesota has ever spent. “We did,” Carmody said. “We repurposed an old, run-down elementary school building in Cosmos into a building for Setting 4. We used to have law enforcement come to the program almost every day; That’s no longer necessary, as it is designed to house and help children with disabilities.”
Other facilities are in Montevideo, Pipestone, Bellevue and Windham, Carmody said.
“I used to think Belview was the most inappropriate site, and I think Wilmar’s is right now,” he said, noting that the Bellevue site was built when the Redwood Falls and Bellevue school districts merged. He pointed out that it was located in a school that had been closed down. “We’re going to move that program to Marshall. We’ll do it next fall.”
He noted that the Windham site is also located in an old elementary school leased from the school district. It was previously located on the site of the oldest elementary school in the area, but with the construction of a new elementary school, it was moved to the next oldest elementary school.
“We have to do things like this because some projects can’t be funded and, frankly, the costs can be astronomical if you try to put them together,” Carmody said. said.
Carmody said New London’s new project began to take shape after a failed attempt to work with Willmar Public Schools in creating a new space for the program. The plan began before the coronavirus pandemic.
“Due to the difficulty in funding these projects, Willmar Public Schools is asking 54 school districts in southwestern Minnesota and the Midwest to fund the program or fund the building if SWWC goes out of business. We wanted to ask them to sign a resolution to provide that, and because they couldn’t do that, that part of the project failed,” Carmody said. “We went to the City of New London, the economic development authority. They’re working with us. We’re designing buildings. We’re making sure we make this all work. Hopefully, they’ll build this to our specifications. It’s the same process we used in Montevideo.”
EDA will own the building and SWWC will lease it. The facility will be separate from the New London Spicer School District.
