The Crookston School Board met on Monday evening at the Crookston High School choir/orchestra room and approved the 2019 levy increase of 5.3 percent, heard from Highland School fifth and sixth grade students and teachers about STEM.
The meeting started off with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) program presentation by Highland Elementary School sixth grade teacher Dan Halland, fifth-grade teachers Kristi Griffin and Erica
Uttermark and two students, Ashton Hoffman and Logan Brekken. The STEM program has been used for gifted and talented students and has been expanded at Highland for all students. Halland said some students are great in math and reading, but struggle in science because they aren’t good with the hands-on learning or problem solving so the STEM projects help them with learning and it helps makes science fun.
The students made tinfoil boats to test buoyancy and one boat held 341 pennies. They also build bridges out of 95 popsicle sticks and one bridge held 160.4 pounds last year. The fifth graders in attendance showed their robots they programmed using an iPad. They used coding to program the robots to move and they used math and a lot of trial and error.
The STEM projects are made possible through the financial support of the Crookston Education Foundation and the Highland School PTO. The school board members and Superintendent Jeremy Olson were impressed by the presentation. “I had so much pride when I was watching the presentation thinking these kids are awesome,” said Superintendent Olson. “It was fun to see what they are doing. They are coding in fifth grade and that is amazing to me that our students are exposed to that and Dan Halland’s presentation was fascinating and that the bridges can hold that much weight. I am very proud of my staff.”
The board approved the November 26 meeting minutes and the current bills. They also approved the employment of Michelle Busacker as a paraprofessional at Washington and Jessica Withrow as School Age Care at Washington School.
On the main agenda, there was nobody in attendance for the Truth in Taxation hearing and the board approved a 5.3 percent increase in the levy. The levy for 2019 is $3,089,255.33. The increase was primarily to help the new achievement and integration funding where the school will pay 30 percent of the cost and the state will fund 70 percent. “There are two reasons why the levy is up a bit and one is there is an ebb and flow to our bond payments so basically it is due to the timing when the payments are due and sometimes it can bring the levy down and sometimes it can bring it up and this year it will bring it up,” said Superintendent Olson. “The second part of it is we received integration funding for next year which goes on this year’s levy and we are looking at $150,000 that is coming to the district and 70 percent of that the states share and the 30 percent is a levy. Anytime you can get a 70/30 split we are going to go for that.” With the extra money, they will look to provide intervention support for the seventh and eighth-grade students and also look for an additional liaison position.
The board also approved the World’s Best Workforce (the school districts strategic plan for education) unanimously, something required by the Minnesota Department of Education. The Crookston School District had five indicators they had to look at as directed by the Minnesota Department of Education. The five components are Kindergarten readiness, third-grade reading proficiency, achievement gap reduction, graduation and career, and college readiness. “Overall, we are very happy with third-grade reading proficiency being nine percent over the state average. We fell a little short on Kindergarten readiness and we are working on improving that,” said Superintendent Olson. “We came up short in the achievement gap, but we believe hiring intervention support for the seventh and eighth grade will help. The graduation rate is going well with 94 percent graduating last year.”
The board approved the election of 2019 MREA Board of Director candidate, Lori Bitter (Principal at Rainy River and Crookston LEO Club Director Linda Morgan’s sister) and they approved the combined polling place for district elections not held on the day of a statewide election. The location would be St. Paul’s Lutheran Church from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
The board accepted a donation from the June Shaver Scholarship fund in the amount of $5,400 towards Crookston High School student scholarships.
Washington School Principal Denice Oliver said they have had 758 students in the patch program (after school homework and project help), which is 62 percent of the student population at the end of the year last year.
Highland School Principal Chris Trostad said they have received a very generous donation from Crookston area farmers to go towards purchasing food for struggling families over Christmas break and they are working on their continuous improvement plan. Highland School will hold an open house on December 20.
School Board chair, Frank Fee, said he was happy to report they have settled on a three-year contract with the paraprofessionals. He also said there will be a special meeting on December 20 to approve a copier lease.
At the conclusion of the meeting, the choir/orchestra room was closed for the six-month evaluation of Superintendent Jeremy Olson. The evaluation will be released at the next regular school board meeting on Monday, January 14.
Pictured left to right – Chris Trostad, Dan Halland, Erica Uttermark, Kristi Griffin, Logan Brekken, and Ashton Hoffman
