Crookston Public Schools released their October Community Communication earlier this morning. You can find it down below –
Greetings from Crookston Public Schools!
This has been a tough couple of weeks in Pirate Country as we mourn the loss of a student. Thank you to the community members, staff, and students who supported each other during this very difficult time. I would also like to recognize our partners at Alluma (formerly Northwest Mental Health), our teachers, and our counseling staff for the good work that was done to support our students during these last couple of weeks. I am proud of everyone’s selfless and overwhelming support for our students.
Homecoming week was filled with much-needed outlets for our students. The Seniors won Powderpuff Football and the Homecoming Volleyball Tournament, Crookston Football was victorious, and over 260 students attended the Homecoming Dance.
On Saturday, October 9th from 10am-Noon an event called eRace the Stigma will be held at Crookston High School. This walk will focus on hope and healing for our community. There will be a short speaker, a 2 mile walk that will go from Crookston High School to UMC track and back, as well as music and Letty’s taco truck. This event is brought to you through the community partnership of Alluma, Crookston Public Schools, Hope Coalition, Polk County Social Services, UMC and Blue Cross Blue Shield. We welcome you to join in this event!
Proposed School Configuration: Crookston Public Schools is currently working on using additional federal funds to fund the addition of a Preschool wing with modern facilities onto Highland Elementary School as well as redoing the parent drop-off to enlarge the parent drop off and pick up area. This would bring Highland Elementary School to a PreK-grade 5 building. The second portion of the proposal would be to create a separate space within our current Crookston High School for a Middle School and have a self-contained Middle School for grades 6-8th. We are currently working with architects on this project and this project would not result in any impact to our taxpayers as we would be using federal funds. This configuration should allow us to maximize long-term efficiency and provide focused instructional support for our students.
Literacy Goal: As a district, we are focusing on building literacy skills for all students. Our first-year goal is to bring our student achievement scores to where they were pre-covid. Learning loss is a fact and has happened, it is our job to get our students back to where we were before we can start moving the bar higher. Our second-year goal is a 4% increase beyond where we were prior to covid and our third-year goal is an additional 5% increase. If we can do this, our school will be one of the highest achieving schools in this region. It is one thing to have goals, it is completely different to have a strategy to get there. Our strategy is to focus on our standards and the standards work that we embarked on this summer. Our high school is joining what our elementary schools have been successfully doing by promoting and encouraging reading and writing across subject areas. This is a very simplistic response, however, often it is the simple things well executed that make the greatest impact.
Upcoming Calendar Items:
October 13th-2W Day Early Dismissal. 2W days are used for staff training and are part of our district’s staff development strategy to improve academic performance.
Dismissal Times for each school
Washington Elementary-12:30pm
Highland Elementary- 12:40pm
Crookston High School- 1:00pm
Fall Parent-Teacher Conferences: October 19th and 20th
Oct. 19th Parent Teacher Conference 1:00pm-7:30pm (School will do an early out on the 2W day dismissal schedule)
Oct. 20th No School, Parent-Teacher Conferences 8am-7:30pm
If you would like to contact me, please feel free to reach me at 218-770-8717 (cell) or email me at jeremyolson@isd593.org.
