TYLER — Stakeholders in the Russell-Tyler-Ruthton School District are being asked to help provide solutions by taking part in a community survey regarding facilities in the district.

Superintendent David Marlette said the process needs to be community driven from the bottom up, rather than from the top down.

“We don’t want this to be a top-down push from the board or the administration,” Marlette said. “It has to be a bottom-up process from the community, with the community telling us what they want to do. Maybe they want to keep it the way it is or maybe they want to build one big K-12 school in one location. There are some tough questions moving forward.”

Marlette said the facilities in each of the three communities are old — and old is oftentimes very expensive to maintain.

“Our buildings are so old and you hate to put money into old buildings,” he said. “The district has been conservative and hasn’t done a lot to the buildings for a lot of years. After awhile, it really catches up with you.”

Currently, students in K-5 attend public school in Ruthton. Students in grades 6-8 are at Russell and students in grades 9-12 attend classes in Tyler.

“One of the tough questions in our district is whether we keep that format to try to bring the students into a K-12 facility,” Marlette said. “It’s very expensive to keep three attendance centers going. All three communities are very proud of their communities and they like having the schools there. So we need the people in those communities to speak out and tell us what they want to do.”

A task force of at least 30 people is being formed, with 10 individuals from each of the RTR communities.

“We’ve got this survey put together and we’re putting it out to the public to try and get as many of the community stakeholders to fill it out,” Marlette said. “We’ve been taking applications and there are 32 people who want to serve on that task force, which will start on August 1.”

Marlette said that sometime down the road this fall, the task force is likely to make some recommendations to the school board.

“The school board will then have some tough decisions on how to move forward,” he said. “We’re trying really hard not to push from the top down, so this is everyone’s opportunity to tell us what they want us to do.”

There are six locations in which to pick up a hard copy of the survey — at the school office or city offices in Russell, Tyler and Ruthton. Another option is to use the online survey. A link to the survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RTRFacilitiesSurvey) can be found on the district website at www.rtrschools.org.

“The easiest way is to go to our district website, find the link and away you go,” Marlette said. “It can be anonymous and at the end of the questions, there’s an opportunity to comment.”

The first series of questions simply asks for a person’s “initial facility ideas” without providing additional detailed information. The second series of similar questions provides the survey-taker with “facility facts and figures” to see if his or her feeling have changed. The third series of questions includes “tax impact information” to see if that changes a person’s ideas or opinions.

“We definitely want to hear what people are thinking,” Marlette said. “We know we have to have thick skin because these are some really difficult questions that have to be asked. We’ll never know what people are thinking until we ask the questions, so we’re doing that.”

Marlette said he wants to give people plenty of time to fill out the survey, so no set end time has been determined yet for final submissions to be made. While the task force anticipates meeting on Aug. 1, surveys can still be taken or sent in through July and most of August, he said.

At a recent listening session, Marlette said voters would likely have to support a tax increase if the district decides to remodel or build new facilities.

“Of course, to build a K-12 facility would add a lot onto the tax structure, which farmers aren’t having a good year right now with the rain — a lot of their crops were drowned out — so we need to be very aware of that, especially since we’re a rural district,” he said. “There are a lot of factors, so we’re going to ask the questions and see what they say.”

The Ag2School credit looks to provide some assistance in that department as it would apply to all current and future capital references.

“It’s a 40 percent discount (to farmers), so that’s a really huge benefit,” Marlette said. “The state agrees to pay the first 40 cents on the dollar, so that’s a pretty good discount. If we do a facility bond, the state said it would honor its commitment till the end of the bond, which is usually 20 or 30 years. So it’s really a huge positive.”

While no one likes the thought of a tax increase, Marlette said the decisions cannot be all about the money.

“It’s also about the quality of education for the students,” he said. “If it’s totally about money, then we’re probably not going to get anywhere.”