With both Halloween and election day coming up, it's only fitting that horror stories are making the rounds about what budget slashers will do to schools if they don't get more money.

In the sprawling Anoka-Hennepin district, the school board has already approved closing four elementary schools and one middle school over the next two years if voters don't approve a property tax increase request on Nov. 5. North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale, another large suburban district holding a tax referendum, has warned that voter rejection could lead to the loss of all sports and other extracurricular activities throughout the entire district. That means no football, no baseball, no homecoming, no student council, no National Honor Society, not even yearbooks.

And in Richfield, there's been talk of sharing services with other districts, and possibly losing some autonomy as a result.

Those districts are among about 25 in the Twin Cities area that will be asking voters for more money for schools in Nov. 5 referendums.

School officials say they're laying out the hard truths now so voters will know exactly what will happen if they say no to school funding requests. They say residents have told them that they weren't aware of what the consequences would be of voting no last November, when 35 suburban Twin Cities districts held referendums and 24 came away empty-handed. What followed in the winter and spring was a budget-cutting bloodbath in which hundreds of teachers were laid off, bus service was dramatically reduced and fees for participation in extracurricular activities went stratospheric.

Some voters dubious

But such chilling warnings have led some disgruntled voters to accuse districts of using scare tactics, of threatening worst-case scenarios to influence the outcome at the polls.

"I really think they're going to put the fear tactic in there," said Andover parent Toni Badinger about Anoka-Hennepin's threat to close five schools. "I'm voting in favor [of the referendum request] because I feel I'm forced to, because of the fact that they are sticking it to the children."

Some have pondered whether school boards will carry out their threats.

"I don't know; I ask myself that question all the time," said Maplewood parent Mary Putney, whose daughter Kristin is a junior at North High School in the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale district. "I know they have to cut significantly. What else are they going to do, have 70 kids in a classroom?"

If such tactics are meant to scare voters into doing the districts' bidding, then they could be effective. In 1995, Anoka-Hennepin officials announced before a referendum that, without more money, 38 high school teachers would be laid off and middle-school students would lose bus service. Voters gave them what they wanted. That same year, the West St. Paul-Mendota Heights-Eagan district warned of cuts that it said would indirectly lead to higher dropout rates, more violence and a greater risk of children being hit by cars. That worked, too. Shakopee announced in 1988 that athletics would end if its excess levy was voted down, and Westonka school officials raised the spectre of consolidation with a neighboring district in 1995. Both got their money.

'Not Chicken Little'

But school administrators and school board members insist they mean business, and aren't just trying to scare up more money at the polls.

"This is not a Chicken Little situation anymore," said Dan Kaler , North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale superintendent.

"The board has taken action to do these things," said Anoka-Hennepin school board Chairman Mike Sullivan. "These are not proposed actions."

Should Anoka-Hennepin's request for up to $30 million a year for five years go down to defeat, schools would close in the district for the first time since the early 1950s when numerous tiny rural school districts consolidated to form Anoka-Hennepin. Even now, district administrators are mulling over which schools are the most likely candidates for closing. If the schools have to be shut down, said district administrative services director Tom Durand, he will suggest that they be sold.

There's a districtwide ripple effect, he said. School boundary lines would have to be changed to accommodate all those students left without schools, and new bus routes would be drawn up. And that doesn't even count the intangible impact on parents, teachers and students for whom a school is a critical part of the neighborhood.

"No one wants to see their local schools closed," Durand said.

Should voters turn down the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale request for up to $11 million a year for 10 years, and should the school board carry through on the proposal to eliminate sports and activities, schools such as North St. Paul's North High and Oakdale's Tartan High would be stripped down to bare academics. Gone would be 12 boys' sports and 12 girls' sports at all levels. There would be no student council and school newspaper. Band, choir and the chess club would disappear. So the knowledge/quiz bowl team, the math team, and S.A.D.D. (Students Against Drunk Driving) chapter.

Spectre of inactivity

All this has the hundreds of students who participate in activities worried. Their parents, too.

Putney painted her own unpleasant scenario. "It's 2:30 in the afternoon, and 4,000 teenagers have nothing to do," she said.

North senior and student council vice president Kaylene Mrozinski took it one step further.

"School spirit would be at an all-time low," she said. "Crime and drinking and sex would go through the roof. I think kids would have so much time on their hands they wouldn't know how to handle it in a proper way."

Some students and parents are handling the current situation by looking at other schools; either private, or public schools in adjoining districts such as Stillwater and Mahtomedi. As much as parents contribute to activities through booster clubs and fundraising activities, it's doubtful that they could come up with enough cash to keep such cuts from happening.

"No way, absolutely not," said Putney, who is an officer with the North High girls basketball and volleyball booster clubs. "When you talk about the gym time and buses, and all the coaches and uniforms, no way."

Not everyone thinks doing away with activities is such a bad alternative. District school board Chairman Dick Baldwin said parents who didn't want their schools closed in last year's round of budget cuts suggested the activities cuts as a way to save the schools.

"That was one of the things we kept hearing over and over again," he said. " 'We'd rather have smaller class sizes and keep schools open than keep [sports and other activities],' " he said.

Plus, noted Baldwin, there's still some wiggle room to do something else if the board finds that eliminating activities is too distasteful a budget fix for the community.

"None of these things is cast in stone," he said. "They're all subject to review."

-- Norman Draper is at ndraper@startribune.com .