The Crookston School Board approved a school makeup plan proposed by Superintendent Jeremy Olson for the current school year and adopted a similar program for future years at their meeting on Monday night. “Right now, we’ve had four storm days,” said Olson. “The board just accepted a plan that forgives up to five days. Once we reach six, we’d have a makeup day on Easter Monday. Day seven, eight, nine would be added to the end of the year. If we get into a situation where we’re adding one day to a week we may look at expanding hours of operation because it doesn’t allow make sense to bring back students for one day during a week.”
Olson clarified statements made by Governor Tim Walz recently that schools wouldn’t be financially punished for missing too much school. Walz however, can’t change the statute that says schools need 165 contact days with students, only the legislature can do that. The Department of Education sent information to public schools stating there wasn’t a fiscal penalty for falling below the statute and are working on a plan to create an exemption or some similar tool for districts that have a good reason for falling below the statute. “We try not to operate among the minimums in Crookston,” said Olson. “The State Statute is 165 days, we actually run 172 contact days with students because we don’t want to be a minimum school, we want to be an exceeds school. We’ve got four days we’ve missed so far so we’re at 168 days so we’re still above the state minimum.”
The teacher’s union contract says the first three days can’t be made up, and most contracts with the different unions in the school system say that days four and five can be made up, but the employees on those contracts must be paid for the day off and the makeup day. So, beginning on day six, the cost to makeup school becomes more fiscally responsible for the district. The School Board approved Olson’s proposal to include on the district calendar the potential school makeup days beginning with the 2019-2020 beginning with the sixth day of school explains Olson. “For subsequent years we’d like to build into our calendar that our first makeup day would be President’s Day,” said Olson. “Our second makeup day would be Easter Monday and then days added to the end of the year.”
Olson also presented a proposal for a part-time position for a gifted and talented program at Highland Elementary. The school receives money each year that they can place into a reserve if unused for such a program, but the funds can only be used on the gifted and talented program. “I’m very excited about the gifted and talented program,” said Olson. “Mr. Trostad, our principal at Highland, took this and ran with this. We’re really excited to about offering some opportunities to our gifted students to challenge them, help them realize that school is a fun place and that we want to challenge them at their level. It will be coming next fall, so be ready for it. We have a .2 position that’s been approved and we believe we’re going to find the right fit. We have a very particular set of skills we’re looking for and hope that person comes and knocks down our door. If you know someone who has that gifted and talented experience, we’d be more than interested.”
It’s been more than five years since the district spent money from their gifted and talented allocation, which chair Frank Fee stated was ridiculous.
During the Superintendent’s report, Olson congratulated Summer Goulet on advancing to the Multi-Regional Spelling Bee, told the board there has been a lot of interest from architects in the bus garage RFP and that members of the bus garage committee visited Lake of the Woods to look at their roughly 20-year-old garage. Fee added while the building was a little older it was still in good shape and could provide the committee some good ideas as the process continues on its way.
The final item Olson updated the board an adjustment he’s filed to the school ADM or average daily membership from the 1,125 the district had forecasted to 1,102 for the remainder of the year. The adjustment will not change the final dollar amount the school receives just balances the payments, so the school doesn’t have to pay back funding at the end of the year says Olson. “The ADM adjustment, without getting into the weeds a lot, we made an adjustment to 1,102 on our ADM,” said Olson. “Originally we had 1,125 which does not reflect our current enrollment of 1,115 to make up the difference. The state pays you on the 1,125 until you change that on the ADM system. At the end of the year if you don’t change that we’d get a negative adjustment of about 10 students times $9,000 totaling about $90,000. We made the adjustment to 1,102 to reflect our current population and make sure we wouldn’t have a negative adjustment at the end of the year. It’s a procedural step that does not change the revenue of the district, it just changes the timing of the revenue.”
