Southern Minnesota School of Music needs to raise $25,000 by end of month

MANKATO, Minn. (KEYC) - The Southern Minnesota School of Music announced on Monday that it needs to raise $25,000 by the end of the month, or it will be shut down.

Mary Flanagan, the former director and a violin instructor at the school, says that over the past eight years, the school had become overly dependent on state and local grants as it grew from a school with 60 students in Mankato, to 220 students across 10 counties.

Those counties include Blue Earth County, Nicollet County and Brown County among others.

Flanagan says that the school was rejected for $100,000 worth of state and local grants, and a community partner decided to not renew a $40,000 agreement to let the school run its string program. It then began having trouble getting money together to pay teacher salaries.

“I think it’s a wakeup call to where we need to be putting our focus, and where we should have been putting our focus a long time ago, which is our alumni. We have almost 50 years of incredible musicians behind us,” Flanagan said.

Which is why the school decided to post a call for help on GoFundMe.

Riley Kolstad, who replaced Flanagan on Monday as executive director, said that $25,000 they’re requesting would help the school continue to pay its teachers while it tries to find a way to make up for the rest of its losses.

In total, he says the school will need $100,000 by the end of the year to balance its books.

“Without paying the teachers, we don’t have teachers and without any teachers we don’t have a school,” Kolstad said.

Over the past year, Kolstad says the school has already had to delay payments by a week twice, and two staff members have left over pay concerns.

Kolstad hopes that if the community can help the school raise $25,000 by Sunday, Apr. 6, they can avoid future delays.

But if the school can’t reach that goal by the end of the month, it may have to close.

The school says in addition to the GoFundMe, it is accepting checks at its main address at 110 S Broad St, Mankato.

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