The city of Lonsdale and the local schools are doing considerably better than cities and districts of similar size, according to the leadership of two school districts, a private school and the mayor of Lonsdale.
Similar to the annual State of the Union speech given by the president, a tradition in Lonsdale gives leadership the opportunity to highlight what they’ve accomplished over the last 12 months. This year, the presentation included a speech from Holy Cross Catholic School’s principal and was the first time for the public school districts’ superintendents to discuss the first year under new leadership.
First up was Mayor Tim Rud, who highlighted several of the new and upcoming amenities that have made it to Lonsdale in the last year. He also highlighted the development happening in the Lonsdale Business Park, including the $15-million factory that Scan Air Filter is constructing.
Just down the road from the Business Park, the now-former Lonsdale Clinic sits atop the hill near the new police station. The clinic was recently purchased by the city and will be transformed into a new city hall and library.
“As you know City Hall is pretty small and outdated,” Rud said. “And as the city expands, we need additional space. But the positive of course is the consideration of the Lonsdale Library up there in kind of one city campus. And what’s really going to be nice is, coming from the east is the gateway into the community. So if you drive into town, you’ll see the city hall and the new police station we constructed and all those kinds of city entities. Really very, very successful goals for the city.”
He also highlighted the new skate park at Sticha Park. The equipment was bought pre-owned for significantly less money than estimated. He also noted the city is in the process of getting new pickleball courts and a disc-golf course.
The schools
After the mayor, leadership from the big schools in the area spoke briefly about how their districts are doing.
New Prague Area Schools demonstrated significantly better performance in key areas than the state average, namely the 96% graduation rate, according to Superintendent Andy Vollmuth.
New amenities in the district include a state-of-the-art pool that’s open to the public.
Holy Cross Catholic School Principal Jim Grogan was featured in the event for the first time. He said his school has been seeing a boom in enrollment. While it’s still significantly smaller than the public schools, its number of students has nearly doubled since the pandemic.
“People were flocking to us,” he said. “They needed the small class. We were able stay in a session a little bit more. And we’re kind of dealing with what everybody else is dealing with. There’s some learning loss. There’s some families that are hurting, that are just recovering from all that.”
An interesting piece shared by Grogan is the sizable percentage of non-Catholic students that they serve. Nearly 40% of their students aren’t Catholic, many of whom come from the Lakeville area.
One area he was particularly proud of was a recent capital campaign, which successfully raised funds to purchase a new bus for trips to a church to do morning mass.
The same funding successes weren’t shared by the public schools, which have had their fair share of budget cuts.
New Prague Area Schools is currently in the process of cutting another $3.5 million from the budget, which comes a year after another $3 million was cut.
TCU has faced its own challenges, according to TCU Superintendent Kevin Babcock. He noted the ongoing effort to unify the district that resulted from a three-district merger 12 years ago and trailing test scores.
The budget was less of a focus for Babcock, but he said inflation and other global factors have contributed negatively to the budget. He did mention some ideas that have been implemented to help offset these fiscal challenges, like the installation of solar panels on some buildings that have led to decreased energy costs. In some cases, it’s actually led to a return.
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