What Is The West Central Education District?

The West Central Education District is a consortium of four school districts collaborating to provide certain low incidence and at-risk services that would likely be difficult to obtain on an individual basis.  Through our Joint Powers agreement, the districts of Albany, Melrose, Paynesville, and Sauk Centre use a combination of local, state, and federal funding to provide teachers, specialists, administrative assistance, and support personnel. In addition, collaborative funding is used to ensure access to joint staff development opportunities and various data management systems.  Our collaborative purchasing power enables us to act as a single entity when negotiating in order to maximize funding.

While the four districts mentioned in the previous paragraph are our mainstays, we do service students from outside our boundaries on occasion at our Area Learning Center located in Melrose, and at the Beacon Program in Sauk Centre.  Costs associated with non-member district students are recovered through the state tuition billing system as allowed in statute and law.  As a regional provider of at-risk services, we are able to partner with other districts and entities when we have needs that are beyond our scope.