Jan Mitchell, LWV observer
Mike Berthelsen was absent.
Announcements included:
Healthy Community Initiative award to Cheryl Mattison’s ALC students for
their soy candle project, which has over the years provided $14,000 for the
CAC
Speech team has 5 who qualified for state competition
Student services has a grant of $15,000 for training parents of special needs students
The Middle School musical was a big success.
High School students produced Art A’la Carte with great success.
The Missota music festival was also very successful.
Bridgewater 1st grade teachers presented a PLC report.
Food Services:
Director Pam Haupt presented her budget and a report on the program. The federal government will require more fruits, vegetables and whole grains in the future, and will provide a fraction of the anticipated expense. However, Northfield lunch prices will not increase next year. The program features more local produce and more healthy options.
Safe Routes to School: The city and the school district got a $30,000 grant from MnDOT to analyze the barriers to K-8 students getting to school on foot or on bikes. Some parents feel the students have too far to go, and sometimes the barrier is cold weather. Costs to improve safety and promote walking range from $0 to $3,000,000. Funds are likely to be unavailable for substantial projects like traffic signals or tunnels. More traffic enforcement on Wednesday mornings is now provided, but long-term funding for such assistance is needed.
PLC Surveys: On line, parents and staff were invited to respond to questions about the day, time, and bussing plans for the PLC program. Results were exhaustively discussed, and the recommendation is to continue the program on Wednesday, with all schools starting one hour late. The busses will run one hour later, and no supervised activities for students will be provided in that early hour on Wednesday, except for those that Kid Ventures provides. Parents can use that service if needed for a $2 daily fee. Ray Coudret’s statistics students also conducted a phone survey and presented their results to the Board. Ellen Iverson, who does data analysis at Carleton, provided a summary of the open-ended questions that the Survey Monkey posed.
Operating Capital/Health & Safety budgets:
Tom Stinger presented these for the Board’s consideration.
The meeting adjourned at 10 p.m.
Comments
Jan, thank you for your reports. They are clear and give me much more of a sense of what is happening in the district.