Greetings from Crookston Public Schools! I wanted to highlight a couple of things that we are very excited for as we continue to move into the rest of this school year:
Return to Activities: Our students are returning to activities and have begun practicing and will soon be competing in their various activities. We are trying to do this in a very safe and responsible manner and are thankful to have kids back in activities. As you know, these activities are very important to our students and are a great outlet during this pandemic. While community attendance at these activities will be limited, we are thankful for our local media’s coverage of these activities!
Leo Club: Yes, they did it again! The Crookston High School Leo Club has received the Award of Excellence from Lion’s International for the 29th time in their 30-year history! While this is an extremely important award and showcases the excellence of our Leo Club, it is not what I am the most proud of this year. What gives me the greatest sense of pride is that a group of Leo Club members raised $1,200 dollars for the Salvation Army prior to Christmas. These kids took the initiative to sacrifice their time to help an organization that does so much good in our community. These students truly found out the power of volunteering to help make our community a better place and that experience is priceless! It is pretty easy to see why this organization for the last 29 years has received this award, as it is the character of the students in Leo Club that makes Crookston Leo Club excellent!
FFA students going to state! We are incredibly excited to see our Ag Program moving forward. This journey is a process that was started two years ago with the introduction of Intro to Ag by Crookston High School Teacher Travis Oliver. Last year with the guidance of our School Board we hired a full-time Ag Teacher to augment our Career and Technical Education offerings. We hired Whitney Rupprecht, an experienced Ag Teacher, and stepped out of the way. The philosophy has been that we are in the heart of Ag country and therefore believed that an Ag Program would be highly beneficial to our students as it leads to a plethora of Ag sector jobs. In this first year of offering a full-time Ag Education position, we have opened up a variety of classes and also started an FFA chapter that Mrs. Rupprecht has been advising. Currently, we have a number of students who have now qualified for state, which exceeds what we thought could be done in this first year! Congratulations to these Crookston High School students who are advancing to FFA state. Nursery Landscape Team: Libby Salentine, Claire Oman, Carter Nelson, and Joslynn Leach. Fish & Wildlife Team: Riley Helgeson, Malakai Hansen, Aaron Boreman, and Tim Brule. Small Animal Vet Science: Bailey Klinnert. Prepared Public Speaking: Victoria Proulx. Extemporaneous Speaking: Linnea French.
Distance Learning Survey: I wanted to thank our parents for filling out the distance learning survey! We use this information to guide our actions and also understand how our parents view what is being offered. The overarching message was clear: the improvements that were made from last spring made our product better, the essential childcare option during distance learning was needed; however, let’s stay in face-to-face instruction as much as possible. Thank you for your feedback as we reviewed all 230 responses.
I am proud to be a member of the Crookston community, as this community has supported our district so well during this pandemic. We are doing our best to ensure that the very best education is given to our students and are awaiting the day when we can return to a more normal delivery of education. This is why we pivoted into in-person instruction as soon as we could do so safely. Thank you for your continued support. Go Pirates!
