The Crookston School Board held their regularly scheduled meeting and annual Truth and Taxation Hearing in the Crookston High School auditorium because of a large crowd in attendance.
At the start of the meeting, Frank Lindgren urged the board to have kids back in the classroom instead of distance learning. To open up the high school every day instead of every other day. His comments are below –
Audio Player
BOARD APPROVES ACTIVITIES – PENDING GOVERNOR’S DECISION
The school board heard from several parents and student-athletes before the board announced their decision on activities.
Lisa Coauette, a concerned mother spoke to the board saying distance learning and a lack of activities/practice are hurting the kids.
Audio Player
Jodi Dragseth, another concerned parent, urged the school board to allow activities to resume when they can.
Audio Player
Emma Boll, a senior student-athlete, said she encourages the board to look at the facts.
Reese Swanson, a student-athlete, spoke to the board again urging to lift the activities ban when the Governor does.
Greg Garmen, Crookston High School Activities Director, and Boys Basketball Head coach, gave the board stats from the fall sports season.
The board said they would allow practice on December 21 to coincide with the Minnesota State High School League. Adrianne Winger made a motion to allow practice and Patty Dillabough seconded the motion. The board voted unanimously to allow activity practices if the Governor allows sports to resume on December 21.
School Board member Tim Dufault said they want activities, but the parents and students have to do their part, including wearing masks, wash hands, and social distance. Frank Fee said a lot of people have brought up North Dakota and South Dakota and he didn’t think that is somebody you want to follow with all their problems. Dufault later passed along stats that North Dakota and South Dakota were some of the worst states in the nation in cases per capita and deaths per capita, while Minnesota was a lot better. This led to a rebuttal from a parent, Christian Kiel (who wasn’t wearing a mask), asking how old the people dying were and he added school board member Fee did everything right and still got it. Fee responded, “I don’t think I did everything right.”
Olson said it is their full intention to have class in model 2 (in person for elementary and hybrid for the high school) on January 4 as of now. But if numbers start going up again, that could change.
CONSENT AGENDA
The board approved the November 23, 2020 and December 3, 2020 meeting minutes.
TRUTH AND TAXATION HEARING/LEVY APPROVAL –
The Crookston School District was asking for a 3.49% levy increase, which would mean an increase of $110,114.01 in funding for a total of $3,268,644.01. The board later certified the levy with unanimous approval. “It shouldn’t be too taxing I hope to everybody in the district,” said Crookston School District Finance Director Laura Lyczewski. “It is a 40-page report. The legislature tells us what we are going to get and it is based on property value, which is set by Polk County. The only option we have is to under levy if the board ever chose to do that.”
WORLDS BEST WORKFORCE
A Worlds Best Workforce presentation is required by the State of Minnesota for all school districts and Superintendent Jeremy Olson gave the presentation.
Crookston is seeing some good news and some bad news. The achievement gap seems to be growing with more students moving into low-risk and more students moving into the high-risk category. There are fewer students in the middle. The goal for the state and the Crookston School District is to close the achievement gap. “We are absolutely concerned about the achievement gap,” said Superintendent Olson. “With COVID-19 we are seeing learning loss and we need to help those struggling the most and develop strategies to combat that.”
Crookston is outperforming the state in most categories, but are doing extremely well in African American and Native American students are outperforming the state average by a large margin.
Crookston’s ACT score average is just under 20 points. “Our ACT scores are nowhere near where they need to be,” said Superintendent Olson. “In the region, they aren’t where we want them to be, especially compared to the state.”
Crookston has expanded their preschool programming, gifted and talented programming, they added a literacy initiative and a Latino Liason position.
BUS GARAGE PROGRESS AND NEXT STEPS
The district has been doing some exploration of what to do with the old bus garages. If they wait a few months it could allow a few more interested parties. Superintendent Olson thought it might be best to wait until March or April to see a better deal. They would need to go with a formal bid process where they take the high bidder. Board Chair Frank Fee asked why they wouldn’t wait a few months and Superintendent Olson said there was no hurry and the board agreed to wait. The next step will be the decision to either sell it or tear it down.
[embeddoc url=”https://kroxam.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Crookston-School-District-levy-2020.pdf”]
Tags: