Thanks to Inver Grove Ford for their support.
At the start of a busy school year the ISD 197 School Board focused on their strategic framework and superintendent goals, enrollment, and student recognition.
Strategic Framework Implementation Targets and Goals
The school board reviewed the strategic framework implementation targets and unanimously approved the superintendent’s goals related to those targets.
- Focus areas: The targets covered three areas—social emotional learning, equitable systems and supports, and college and career readiness.
- Overall: Themes included integrating these focuses across the district (no silos), improving communication with families, listening to student perspectives, and offering more options.
- Specifics: Mentioned changes included the district being awarded a grant to offer a Native American language option, adding halal meal choices and more culturally diverse meals, and developing one-pagers for families to explain social emotional learning.
- Goals: Superintendent Peter Olson-Skog’s goals included supporting the strategic framework, more coordination and alignment among leaders across the district, and an ambitious goal to do one-on-one interviews with all staff within four to six years (requiring 150-200 interviews per year) to improve engagement and feedback. That goal is scaled back from Olson-Skog’s original aggressive timeline at the request of the board—Olson-Skog said he “loves every minute” of those interviews.
Other Items on the Agenda
- Recognitions: The school board recognized three groups—2024 Warrior Hall of Fame inductees, Moreland for their new mural, and Somerset for their new playground.
- New student representatives: The new school year means new student representatives serving on the board. This year’s representatives are seniors Patrick Bohmbach and Nawal Hassan.
- Closed enrollment: The board unanimously voted to close open enrollment for ninth and 10th grades (open enrollment is students from outside the district). This happened last year for multiple grades and is due to limited space and staffing. The board and superintendent clarified that this does not affect any current open enrolled students or new students moving into the district.
- Superintendent report: Olson-Skog’s regular update included enrollment data, noting the district had 5,256 students on the first day. That number will fluctuate, but it’s more students than the district has ever had. Total enrollment across the district came in above projections, but kindergarten enrollment is down, consistently coming in below projections over the past four years.
Engage
- More: Agendas and minutes for ISD 197 School Board meetings are available online.
- Watch: You can watch this meeting online.
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