On Tuesday night, the Crookston School Board met inside the Administrator’s Office inside the Crookston High School. The meeting had only one item, to discuss and plan the budget of the $4.3 million Federal COVID dollars from the State for expenditure of two projects for the school district.
The first project is to add a new preschool addition at the Highland Elementary School in collaboration with a third-party Child Care Service to emphasize Infant and General Child Care. The second project is to create a separate wing for the Middle School students to make a self-contained Middle School to help them feel like it’s their own individual school and like they are transitioning from Middle to High School once they reach 9th grade. Superintendent Jeremy Olson explained the inspiration behind the idea of a self-contained Middle School, “When I first got here, I hoped that I demonstrated that I am a decent listener. So, as I have been listening to people talk about what they desire to see in their schools, one of the pieces that has come up over time has been the idea of self-containing a Middle School versus just having a 7-12 High School,” he explained, “We’ve made some steps there; we’ve tried to look at alternative schedules for the transition for 7th grade and the teachers have done a wonderful job. But there’s only so much you can do within the confines of our current operations. So, we’re looking at how to make Middle School a more meaningful experience for students to make sure that it’s a stepping stone into High School versus going from 6th grade, totally self-contained Elementary and then jumping right into a 7-12 High School, that’s a bit of a transition for kids, and we’re always looking at how do we make that transition better. And this is one of the ideas that has been brought up over and over, is the idea of a Middle School,”
When the projects were first proposed back when they first received the Federal COVID dollars at the end of 2021, the estimated budget for both projects cost $4.4 million. But after cost escalation over the past year, the updated budget has now been raised to $5.2 million from construction contractors to perform both projects. With the budget now too expensive to perform both projects simultaneously, the board met to decide which plan would take priority to be completed first with the funds they had available.
After much deliberation, Superintendent Olson and the board decided to give the preschool addition at the Highland Elementary School priority over the separate Middle School wing, as the Day Care has received approval from the State and is very close to finished, with Olson believing that adding another Child Care provider would also be a great addition to the community. “One of the main priorities is Infant Care. As we again listen to our community members, Childcare is a huge issue. And so, the city and the school district partnered and tried to determine, “How do we make this a reality? How do we get things actually to happen?” One of the things that frustrates me is a lot of talk without action, and that just can’t happen. So we’ve been looking at how do we make this actually happen for parents. And the big need that keeps coming up is Infant Care, that’s a huge need,” said Superintendent Jeremy Olson, “Also in general, Child Care and so the first priority was Infant Care and just getting another Child Care provider just into our community is going to be good. In light of the market in which we are seeing Child Care providers decide to exit. So we want to support that, we think that it’s good for our community, it’s good for our parents and also as we look at economic development down the road, Child Care is a huge portion of economic development,” But due to weather delays and a few adjustments made from public suggestions to the final bit of paperwork, the final approval for the lease has yet to be made.
Superintendent Olson ended the meeting, saying that he will look into different burrowing and money plans for the projects to see if there are any physical alternates they could be exploring to make both projects happen or if they can spend their money more efficiently to complete them.
The next School Board meeting will take place on Monday, February 28, at 5:00 p.m. inside the Choir/Orchestra room.
