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Several state officials presented that check to the district at an event held at Lakeview Elementary School on Tuesday.

With the money, from the state’s Common School Fund, the district plans to continue to invest in books, ebooks, video books and books written in Spanish, as the region has seen an influx of Spanish-speaking students, said Kathy Retzke, the district’s library media specialist.

Wisconsin’s Common School Fund is an annual distribution of earnings used to purchase instructional materials in 421 school districts across the state. Each April, school districts are allocated a portion of the fund on a per-capita basis using the U.S. Census count of residents age 4 to 20 in each district. For the 2021-22 school year, the state distributed $40.6 million from the fund.

State treasurer and U.S. Senate candidate Sarah Godlewski joined Assistant State Superintendent for the Division of Libraries and Technology Tessa Michaelson Schmidt, state Sen. Janis Ringhand, state Rep. Don Vruwink and several other local officials in presenting the district with a check for $81,186.

In addition to short remarks from Godlewski, Michaelson Schmidt and Retzke, district Superintendent Dr. Caroline Pate-Hefty and school Principal Adam Bretl also spoke to the students in the library.

“Our students are essential to our state’s future, and in this challenging environment, it is important we do everything we can to make sure our schools have the resources they need to be successful,” Godlewski said at a March event.

Godlewski added that the district could also use the money to provide Wi-Fi hotspots and computers for students, both of which were needed for students during the period of remote learning earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic.