Nevis School District residents rejected the $3.7 million school completion project this week by a 41-vote margin.
"A hundred more people said 'yes' to the project," superintendent Steve Rassier said of the largest voter turnout to date.
The referendum had 522 opposed and 481 in favor, compared to November 2003 when 508 said "no" and 389 approved of the proposal.
"They took a look at the information and saw it to be a good project," he said of the upswing in electorate approval.
But that didn't dispel the disappointment at the school Wednesday.
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"Now we have to decide if we go back again (with another proposal) or that the voters have spoken and we live with what we've got," Rassier said.
"But we have building issues that need to be solved," he said of the "Band-Aid" portable classrooms, early childhood located in an "old home" and handicap accessibility for both the building and locker rooms. "We won't have a choice; we'll have to fix it.
"We wanted this to be a proactive fix now before it was mandated. The record is clear; the cost will not be going down," he said of construction, materials and oil.
"But we will still provide a quality education," he said. "If we could prove this would make kids smarter, we'd have had more 'yes' votes. We've been too creative in making the existing space work," Rassier said of transforming closets into classrooms.
"We'll process the information, do some soul searching and decide how to proceed," he said. "But the problem is still there."
(Jean Ruzicka writes for the Park Rapids Enterprise , a Forum Communications Co. newspaper)
