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To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to obits@pioneerpress.com. There is no option to place them through our website at this time. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions. General Information: Your full name, Address (City, State, Zip Code), Phone number, And an alternate phone number (if any) Obituary Specification: Name of Deceased, Obituary Text, A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable, TIF and other files are accepted, we will contact you if there are any issues with the photo. Ad Run dates There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply. If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply, contact us for more information. Policies: Verification of Death: In order to publish obituaries a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements during their business hours to verify the death. If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification. Please allow enough time to contact them especially during their limited weekend hours. A death certificate is also acceptable for this purpose but only one of these two options are necessary. Guestbook and Outside Websites: We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead; contact us with any questions regarding this matter. Obituary Process: Once your submission is completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes price and days the notice is scheduled to appear. Please review the proof carefully. We must be notified of errors or changes before the notice appears in the Pioneer Press based on each day’s deadlines. After publication, we will not be responsible for errors that may occur after final proofing. Online: Changes to an online obituary can be handled through the obituary desk. Call us with further questions. Payment Procedure: Pre-payment is required for all obituary notices prior to publication by the deadline specified below in our deadline schedule. Please call 651-228-5263 with your payment information after you have received the proof and approved its contents. Credit Card: Payment accepted by phone only due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations EFT: Check by phone. Please provide your routing number and account number. Rates: The minimum charge is $162 for the first 12 lines. Every line after the first 12 is $12. If the ad is under 12 lines it will be charged the minimum rate of $162. Obituaries including more than 40 lines will receive a 7.5% discount per line. On a second run date, receive a 20% discount off both the first and second placement. Place three obituaries and the third placement will be free of charge. Each photo published is $125 per day. For example: 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500. Deadlines: Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested. Hours Deadline (no exceptions) Ad Photos MEMORIAM (NON-OBITUARY) REQUEST Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries. Please call or email us for more memoriam information Please call 651-228-5280 for more information. HOURS: Monday – Friday 8:00AM – 5:00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS) Please submit your memoriam ad to memoriams@pioneerpress.com or call 651-228-5280. To prepare for the opening of the new Lake Elmo and Bayport elementary schools next fall, Stillwater Area Public Schools officials say they plan to change attendance boundaries “to balance enrollment across the district’s southern schools and make room for future growth.” The district is considering three scenarios. One would affect 135 students, and the other two would affect 39 students each, said Carissa Keister, the district’s chief of staff and director of communications. To the extent possible, each elementary school will have a minimum enrollment of 400 students, Keister said. “It’s just better programmatically when we have at least 400,” she said. “We can have full-time staff for our specialists, and three sections of each grade level. It’s just more efficient.” Much of the district’s growth will be in Lake Elmo, so district officials are purposely building the new 150,000-square-foot elementary school at 10928 10th St. N., “intentionally large,” Keister said. “We’re actually trying to keep room there knowing that we don’t have growth for next year, but we will have growth in five, six, seven years from now,” she said. “We don’t want to overcrowd it now when we know that the growth is coming.” An open house on the plan will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday at Oak-Land Middle School. Families are invited to come learn about the options and share feedback. District leaders and members of the boundary committee will be in attendance. Parents and family members also can provide feedback online prior to Dec. 2 at: https://my.thoughtexchange.com/scroll/132099563/welcome. The school board plans to hold a study session on the proposed changes at 5:30 p.m. Dec. 2 at the Oak Park Learning Center, 6355 Osman Ave. N., in Stillwater. A final decision is expected Dec. 16. District officials have put the current Lake Elmo Elementary School up for sale; the asking price is $5 million. District officials plan to move into the current Andersen Elementary School building in downtown Bayport next year when the new 98,000-square-foot school – which will be called Bayport Elementary – opens at 1003 Fifth Ave. N., in Bayport. District officials are currently split between the Oak Park Learning Center and the Central Services Building on Greeley Street; the Central Services Building will be put up for sale, Keister said. “That would allow all of our central services staff to be together,” she said. “We’re kind of divided up between two buildings right now.” The Oak Park Learning Center will continue to be used for the district’s Alternative Learning Center, the district’s Transition program, professional development and other meetings. In the future, it could be used for some daytime community-education programming, Keister said.
