The Crookston School Board met on Monday evening in the Crookston High School Choir and Orchestra Room.
The meeting began with a presentation from Brady Martz and Associates regarding the 2025 audit, comparing their current position to last year’s and the status of multiple funds. Superintendent Randy Bruer explained what Brady Martz does for the school: “What they do is give you an overall condition of the school over the fiscal year from July 1 to June 30, and they show you how your school ended up.”
The school currently stands in the positive at $366,641 in the general fund. Overall, the school is seeing overall expenses come out to roughly $650,000 less than budgeted for 2025, the food service fund comes out to $1,400 less than budgeted, and the general fund also being in the green, even after making a $271,000 transfer to the community service fund to bring it back to zero. “In our case, we are a couple hundred thousand dollars in the positive from our undisclosed general fund,” says Superintendent Bruer, “that’s the fund you always look at, and it shows that we are moving in a positive direction.”
The board also approved the Crookston Education Association (teachers’ union) Master agreement for 2025-26 and 2026-27. The total cost of the raises and additions to health insurance and retirement will increase the school district’s budget by $756,750 over the next two years. The total costs will rise 5.09% in year one, and 3.03% in year two for a two-year rise of 8.12%. The salary increase is 2.3 percent each year. The full list of costs and where they are going are listed below.
School Board member Mike Theis says that the six-figure rise may be jarring to some people who look at the percentage. “When we entered into contract negotiations, we had to be aware of the fiscal impact…a 2.3% and a 2.3% ends up being a significant amount of money.“
The consent agenda included the approval of the meeting minutes from November 29th, the approval of current bills in the amount of $434,709.59, and the approval of two donations; one from the Crookston Youth Basketball Association (CYBA) in the amount of $2,000 for the boy’s basketball program, and a $10,000 donation in the form of a grant for Clean Energy Resource, which would be used to help fund new electric school buses, should they choose to pursue that route.
The school board was presented with reports from Lisa Conzemius, CHS/CMS Principal, Brandon Neibauer-Adams for Community Education and Superintendent Randy Bruer, and after a pause for the Truth in Taxation Hearing, the board moved to the main agenda.
The board approves the second reading of 17 policy revisions as recommended by the MSBA and the Policy Committee, meaning that the third reading at the next school board meeting will fully approve the policy changes, officially instigating the changes at that point. The board approved the combined polling place for the 2026 elections to be at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, approved the Comprehensive Achievement and Civic Readiness (CACR) report, and approved the agreement with ICS to do a building analysis on Washington School.
The next School Board meeting will be on Monday, January 26th, at 5:00 PM. The board will also meet on Monday, January 5th at 3:00 PM for Superintendent candidate interview training.
