The Crookston School Board met on Monday evening and approved to deficit spend on the 2019-20 school year budget, to raise lunch and some of the breakfast prices, they approved the five-year strategic plan and gave a glowing review of Superintendent Jeremy Olson in his one year review.
The meeting started with Melanie Lessard speaking during the public forum and she asked the school board if they would be willing to help her out and bring motivational speaker Marc Mero to Crookston to speak to students in the Crookston School District and possibly work with other schools including the University of Minnesota Crookston. Lessard said that she will take the money made from this year’s Miss Tootsie pageant and put it towards the speaker. She has $1,200 now and was wondering if the school could help with the cost to make sure they could secure a date to come to Crookston. Last year’s Miss Tootsie pageant made $4,500 and she gave the money to the Ox Cart Days committee but would like to put it towards the kids instead. Lessard, who started to tear up, said she felt strongly that a speaker like Mero would be important for the kids in the school district (see a clip of a Mero presentation at the bottom of the page).
Several board members thanked Lessard for her thoughtfulness and caring for the kids, but they could not approve anything unless it came through the counselors. Superintendent Jeremy Olson said the counselors were aware of the request and they would talk about it. Lessard also said she would be open to donations and one person said they would donate $500. To secure the date she was thinking of, a Wednesday in November, she would need to secure the money by the end of the week. Olson said they will talk about it and try to make a decision as soon as possible.
An item was added to the agenda before the meeting started with the swearing in of temporary school board member Nick Nicholas. He was sworn in and the board moved through the consent agenda with unanimous approval.
The first item on the main agenda was an increase in lunch and breakfast prices for the 2019-20 school year. The USDA requires all schools that charge less than $3.00 for lunches adjust their price and the Crookston School District is currently 33 cents below the weighted averaged and are REQUIRED to increase lunch by 10 cents per meal to follow USDA guidelines.
Elementary lunch and breakfast will go up 10 cents each and Crookston High School lunch will go up 10 cents while breakfast will stay the same. Adult lunch will go up 10 cents and adult breakfast will stay the same. If a kid eats lunch every day it will amount to an increase of $17.20 for the year. “We were required to raise the lunch prices by 10 cents for high school and elementary schools,” said Anna Brekken, Crookston School District Food Services Director. “Because our breakfast prices were significantly lower than all the area schools except for Climax we decided to raise the elementary by a dime.” Brekken said they are currently negotiating the milk and break contracts. “We just finalized with our bread vendor (Pan O’ Gold) and we are waiting to hear back from our milk vendor and if they don’t go up by more than 2.5% we will stick with them for one more year.”
New flooring at Highland School was the next item on the agenda. The board approved new flooring for the Highland school where the locker bays are located on each side of the gymnasium. The board approved the bid from Coating Unlimited of Fergus Falls of $25,074 which was over $12,000 lower than the other bid. Funds for the project come from Long Term Facility Upgrade funds and can only be used for projects that are replacing/fixing something with the same type of thing. “We are looking at using long-term facility maintenance dollars and did get approval from the Minnesota Department of Education to go forward with the flooring,” said Olson. “We are looking at the current locker bay right off the cafeteria and the two connecting hallways that go by the gym to the playground area. We are doing some remodeling to put in some locker bays/changing areas to make Highland School more user-friendly for our sports teams, opposing teams and we can also use it as small group spaces during the school day.”
The Board approved the preliminary budget for the 2019-20 school year with deficit spending in the ballpark of $300,000. Superintendent Jeremy Olson said they were conservative on expenses and income/student enrollment. Crookston started the 2018-19 school year with 1124 students and ended the year with 1102. Olson said they were conservative with the numbers to be safe. “It is very common in approval of preliminary budgets to look at understating revenue and overstating our expenses because we don’t know what the price of fuel will be at this point,” said Olson. “It doesn’t concern me greatly that we are looking at preliminary deficit spending, but obviously anytime there is red ink it concerns me, but from the standpoint of strategy and where we are fiscally I think we will be much closer to zero than in the red by the end of the year.”
The board approved the 20-page Local Literacy Plan and they approved the five-year Strategic Plan that was put together with input from the board, staff, administrators and community members. There are four focal points in the plan –
1. Excel in communication with families and students
2. Culture of high expectations
3. Strong relationships
4. Exceptional systems of support
“Some of these items we have attacked already and some of the items were what the community said they want to focus on,” said Olson. “We are going to be attacking these four pillars and there are some other benchmarks under each one and we will hold ourselves accountable.”
School Board Chair Frank Fee gave the one-year evaluation of Superintendent Jeremy Olson and said he has done a great job in his first year. There were four ratings the board could give Olson for each category with Distinguished and Accomplished as the top two and Satisfactory and unsatisfactory as the bottom two and he received 28 of 30 Distinguished and Accomplished ratings. Olson was rated on the following five categories –
1. Timely communications – Distinguished
2. School District finances – Accomplished
3. Growing student enrollment – Accomplished
4. Pirate Pride – Distinguished
5. Student Achievement – Accomplished
School Board Chair Frank Fee said they are very happy with the job Olson has done in the first year. “All the school board members contributed to the evaluation and Dr. Olson came in high on all five categories,” said Fee. “All-in-all the board is very pleased with Dr. Olson’s first year as superintendent.”
Superintendent Olson gave an update on the bus garage committee meeting on Thursday saying they have three plans with three different price points (which they will save to release at the meeting on Thursday). Olson said they have a metal frame, stick built and post frame option. “All three have to meet the same requirements as far as air handling and health and safety and so forth,” said Olson. “What we are hoping to accomplish on Thursday night is to determine what makes sense to Crookston. There really isn’t a wrong answer, just what will work better for Crookston. We will listen to the recommendation of our committee pretty heavily.” The Crookston Bus Garage meeting will be held at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 27 at the Crookston High School.
Items approved on the consent agenda included the resignations of physical education teacher Matthew Curry; social studies instructor Robbe Nessler; and Melanie Wahl, an early childhood instructor and aide at Washington School. The board approved two coaching resignations from Tyler Brekken as a freshman football coach and Tim Moe as a junior high football coach and the retirement of Peter Heydt as a bus driver.
The board approved several hires with Kathleen Ryan as an Interventionist at Crookston High School; Emily Samuelson as a Success Coach at Crookston High School; Danielle Johnson as a second-grade teacher at Highland School; and Gabrielle Foede as a choir instructor.
The board approved membership with the Minnesota School Board Association and Minnesota Rural Education Association for the upcoming school year and milk and bread vendors.
The next Crookston School Board meeting will be held on Monday, July 22 at 5:00 p.m. at the Crookston High School choir/orchestra room.
