NEW ULM — The New Ulm Public School District will see a 2.53% decrease to the property tax levy in 2022, according to the report given during Thursday’s Truth in Taxation meeting.

During the public hearing, it was announced the levy for 2022 would go down $215,532 or 2.53%. The use of the levy was broken down into individual usage.

Around 61.5% of the levy would go to the school’s general fund and provide funding for the program, operating expenses, building leases, health and safety costs.

About. 2.6% covered community education programs. The remaining 35.9% covered debt service payments.

No public comments were received during the meeting. The school board will certify the final levy amounts Dec. 16.

—

As part of the work session, Supt. Jeff Bertrang gave a review of the district’s community engagement process that will begin this month.

Since summer, the school board has undergone professional development work with Longview Education during monthly work sessions.

A key goal for the district is to promise public education for every child to succeed in school and life. To realize this promise, every child must be given resources, support and interventions based on their needs.

For the next few months, the district will be researching what experiences and needs are in the community through a series of community interviews.

Bertrang said the idea of the interviews is to view education needs from another perspective.

“We want to make sure we have all voices heard so the school board knows of all the different populations that make up the school system,” Bertrang said. The hope is to make each population group given the resource necessary and identify missing voices in the community.

Board member Denny Waloch asked how community members were chosen for these interviews.

Bertrang said different groups were selected in the population base. The federal government already identified certain sub-groups in the community. The district will be reaching out to these groups to gather more information.