The Crookston Public School’s Long Range & Finance Committee met on Friday morning in the Crookston High School District Office to discuss several staffing plans and contract negotiations.
City Administrator Charles “Corky” Reynolds and Community Development Director Kari Kirschbaum attended the meeting to discuss the future uses of Washington Elementary School after the Kindergarten and Preschool additions to Highland Elementary School were completed.
The city had an interest in using the school to be used as a Childcare Center as the city has been working to improve the childcare situation in Crookston and saw that the school could be a great location for the Center with the kindergarten and preschool classes moving to Highland, along with other potential uses. “For at least a year, the city has been contemplating how we address the childcare issue in Crookston. Now with the school moving potentially its kindergarten through the other grades up to Highland, Washington School could become available, and the city has talked about obtaining the Washington building and potentially expanding the present childcare there under one entity or using a concept called “podding” where individual rooms would be run by individual providers,” Reynolds explained. “Also potentially talking about moving what is at Valley Tech Park into a portion of that building as an incubator unit. The city has a number of ideas that it believes are possible for the Washington building, and the city wants to use the building and repurpose it. We don’t need another building sitting idle and empty, but the city is committed to exploring this option very thoroughly.”
The city is currently working with Stephanie Okroi and was helping her pay for the training of her staff to help open the childcare center in Washington. She is currently licensed to be able to house 41 children and was also planning to hold an Open House for the new childcare center located in the north two units in Washington School on Friday, February 17.
The city also had an interest in expanding the school to allow more rooms and services in the building and could even ask the school district to partner with them. Kirschbaum noted that Crookston was lacking about 80 spots for childcare while East Grand Forks was short by over 300 spots, and this could be a way for the school to gain new student transfers.
The city shared it would conduct an inspection of the building to analyze what the building could be best used for and if there were any improvements or repairs that needed to be made. The board asked how much the city would pay for the school to sell, to which Reynolds answered they were unsure of the amount they would offer until they did the inspection of the school. The board also told the city that they had received concerns about the school being turned into an apartment complex similar to the Lincoln School, but the city answered that this wasn’t a plan the city had in mind and they mainly wanted to focus on it becoming a childcare center.
Board member Tim Dufault asked if the school’s playground equipment and gymnasium would stay for the center if the city purchased it, which Kirschbaum answered they believed would be good assets to a childcare center for indoor activities and to entertain the children. Another concern was what the impact would have on the neighboring area, to which Reynolds explained it would reduce the traffic congestion in that area and could increase vibrancy with the sight of all of the children playing. When asked what they would use for funds for improvements to the building if they purchased it, Reynolds explained the city had some funds available for projects like this and could budget for it in the future. They also had the option to seek bonding or grants from the state or private entities.
2023-24 Budget and Staffing Plan
The board then began discussing updates to the district’s budget and staffing plan for 2023-24. Superintendent Kuehn mentioned that they still had to figure out some positions for the staffing for the middle school addition at Crookston High School. The school currently needs four teachers for the middle school addition to teach multiple grade levels for the four core subjects (math, science, social studies, and language arts), and they currently had two that were moving up from Highland. They had also gotten the third position filled thanks to another internal hire, but this left the middle school Science teacher still open.
Highland Principal Chris Trostad and High School Principal Matt Torgerson explained that several teachers at Highland for classes like music and physical education would move up from Highland to the middle school addition near the end of the day to teach the sixth-grade classes, which would save the district on hiring new teachers for the school.
However, this still left open positions that needed to be filled at both the High School and Highland, so the board would meet with the district’s administration team and some of the teachers as part of the staffing plan before the next School Board meeting on February 27.
Kuehn then shared a plan the legislature came up with that would give the school district some new revenue sources. “These are some possibilities, and this was anything from four percent on the funding formula, which would bring in roughly $320,000 ($80,000 per percent) of new revenue. They talked about Special Education Cross Subsidy, which is the district has to pay a certain percentage of the cost of the Special Education costs for our district. If they reduce it by 50%, that would bring roughly another $500,000 of new revenue for our district. The Universal Free Breakfast and Lunch program would be a great benefit for our families and students. Part of that is that we have Compensatory Revenue in for next year. Since we did a good job getting our families to fill out free and reduced applications, we’ll see some additional revenue in our Compensatory, which we know for sure we’re going to get.” Kuehn explained. “The other things coming from the legislature, those are things we believe something’s going to happen, and we’ll get additional revenue. We just don’t know what they look like right now, so as we appropriately staff and budget for next year, we are being super conservative, and we’ll make some adjustments in May and June once we know some of this revenue is actually going to flow to our district in 2023-24.”
Retire and Rehire Process
The board then began discussing its retire and rehire process along with possible contract language. Kuehn proposed for the board to set up a meeting with the Crookston Education Association (CEA) to agree on any contract language for retiring and rehiring. “There’s always been a process where teachers retire, and people take advantage of the teacher’s retirement account, and what’s happened maybe more recently because of the shortage of teachers, there’s been teachers that wanted to stay in work for a couple more years but wanted to exercise the right to draw from their teacher retirement account,” Kuehn explained. “We’ve had that happen this year with at least three retire rehire type contracts, and we’re trying to reach some agreement with the board and the Crookston Education Association on getting some contract language that is appropriate and makes sense for both sides.”
With the agreement, the board won’t have to bring in individual memorandum of understanding to each school board meeting and better serve future retire and rehire cases. The board agreed that they would meet with the CEA so they could discuss terms for the contracts in March.
Upcoming Contract Negotiations for 2023-24
The board finished the meeting with a discussion about upcoming contract negotiations for 2023-24. Kuehn asked the board what they wished for him to do about some upcoming contract negotiations, as several teachers’ two-year contracts would expire on June 30, as his interim contract would end by then. So he asked the board if there was anything they wished for him to help with negotiations before he handed the position off to the next superintendent or let them handle it. After much discussion, the board explained they would work with the next superintendent when they started to discuss the next negotiations for the teacher’s contracts.
The Crookston School Board will next meet on Monday, February 27, at 5:00 p.m. in the Crookston High School Choir/Orchestra Room.
