Riverview Intermediate Upgrades Lead to Later School Start

SARTELL (WJON News)  -- One area school district has chosen to start the school year a little later this fall. The Sartell-St. Stephen School District has decided to start classes on September 8th after Labor Day. Because Labor Day is falling later into September in 2026 and 2027, the state legislature approved schools starting classes earlier over the next two years.

Many other districts in the area have elected to start before the fall holiday. Sartell-St.Stephen Superintendent Michael Rivard says keeping their start after Labor will help out with the new HVAC installation at Riverview Intermediate School:

"What that does is it gives all those workers and crews that are going to be in there (Riverview) working on the HVAC System more time to complete the critical work that has to happen. The idea is going to be let's support safety, long-term building improvements, but still have a strong start of the year."

Voters approved the $22 million HVAC referendum for Riverview in February 2025.

He says 2027 will see phase II of the installation at Riverview, so they expect to start the 2027 school year after the late Labor Day as well:

"We'll have less work to do the following summer but it will be a little bit more shorter of a time stretch because of how Labor Day works in the summer of 2027 but yes, we'll be using all of those summer days to complete what really is a historical project for our building that was built back in 1969-1970, so this is important work to get done."

Rivard says one downfall to the HVAC work being done in the summer is most of Riverview will not be available for the next two summers for people to use, primarily for safety reasons.

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