By Tom Weber, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – 
Voters in Venice, Ill. will essentially decide next week whether to keep open their town's small school.
Two questions are on Tuesday's ballot. One asks permission to borrow $500,000 to pay debt. The other asks to "deactivate" the high school and send the district's 58 high school students to nearby schools.
That means the small Metro-East district would only offer only grades K-8.
Currently all grades K-12 are in the same building, with the high school connected by a hallway. But the high school has fallen into disrepair, so those students have moved into the other part of the building.
The state is also overseeing the district's finances because its books have been so bad in recent years.
KWMU's Tom Weber spoke with the district's acting superintendent, Richard Basden, about the vote.
Basden says voters must say "yes" to both questions to keep the small school open.