LAPORTE-Leaders at Laporte Public School and Walker-Hackensack-Akeley School District are set to tentatively consider a sports co-op between them.
On Monday night, Laporte school board members are set to discuss forming a sports co-op with Walker, according to their agenda. About 12 miles south, their counterparts at Walker-Hackensack-Akeley are scheduled to meet at about the same time to consider a staff request to "investigate options" for the same.
Staff and officials from the two districts uniformly stressed that Monday's discussions are preliminary.
"We're exploring some possibilities. Nothing more, nothing less," said Joe Jorland, a Laporte school board member. "We've co-opped with Walker, off and on in the past, for years."
The schools have worked together to field a golf team and a football team, he said.
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Schools or school districts generally co-op a team due to budgetary pressures or a dwindling number of students who sign up for a given sport-or both. A school district with relatively few sign-ups for a given sport might agree to send them to a larger neighbor to play under its banner, for instance, or districts of roughly equal size might merge their teams to form a new one.
Co-ops are done on a team-by-team basis, according to staff at the Minnesota State High School League. If or when both school boards approve the arrangement, it would then need to be OK'd by the teams' conference, then the section, then the high school league, Erich Martens, the league's executive director, explained.
Laporte's board meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday, April 8, in the school's media center. Walker-Hackensack-Akeley's is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. the same day in its own media center.
