REGIONAL- After a thorough recap of last week’s public hearings at district schools, the ISD 2142 School Board voted 4-3 on Tuesday to switch to a four-day school week for next year.
Those voting for the change included North Woods area board members Jarrett Bundy and Mallory Manick, Tower-Soudan area member Ron Marinaro, and South Ridge area member Linsey Larson. Chris Koivisto, of Northeast Range, Lynn Hilde, of Cherry, and Kristin Zorn, also representing South Ridge, voted no.
Among those supporting the change, Marinaro was the most effusive with his enthusiasm for the move.
“We need to be leaders, not followers and I think we’re going to gain students, I really do,” Marinaro said. “We’re going to go forward. I believe we’ll gain. I did a lot of thinking, a lot of looking, and I heard a lot of positivity. I think a lot of the work is done – we will be ready. There’s no way I would say please jump into the deep end to drown. I don’t work that way. We’ve got plenty of time to work the details out and be very ready.”
The nay votes appeared to be more concerned with the lack of clarity around some of those details, specifics about how the Friday child care will work, how paraprofessional assignments will be juggled to preserve their hours and benefits with a four-day week, how teachers and students will manage the longer days, etc. – than direct opposition to the four-day week itself.
“I like to have my ducks in a row before we do anything,” Zorn said. She expressed concern for students who “don’t have a great home life and school is a safe spot for them. Academics, I know what information is out there and my concern is that if we were way up here, great, but we’re not. We’re down lower and I don’t want our scores to go lower.”
“There’s lots of things that are not, in my opinion, well developed at this time, not that we don’t have time to do it,” Koivisto said. “I’m sure we’ll be successful, but there’s just a lot of unknowns, and food insecurities, it’s important for some of these kids to be at school five days a week for reasons beyond academics, but for academics for sure. It was promising to listen to some teachers talk about how they could break up a lesson, do a 30-minute math lesson in the morning and a 30-minute lesson in the afternoon. It certainly wasn’t something I’d thought of. So, there are some lessons to be learned from other schools that have done it and we can possibly work on our curriculum so that it works and it becomes what I’ve asked for – more frequent shorter lessons for student success. I’m not sure I’m ready to say that we’re ready for it.”
Bundy had a positive view on the impact on academics.
“We did talk to teachers and students, and teachers were all for it, especially the lab-driven teachers because they can get more time to do these curriculum classes,” he said. “Some of the young elementary teachers were for it – the extra 20-some minutes a day wasn’t going to make much of a difference because they’re already so active and it’s just going to keep them active. Some of the studies I looked at, curriculum never fell. If anything, it stayed the same or went up with their test scores, so that was encouraging. That’s just not in Minnesota. That’s United States wide. Oklahoma has a huge amount of classes already in four day weeks. It shows good results.”
Manick said that the biggest concern at the North Woods meeting wasn’t about the four-day week, but was about the staff reductions due to the budget cuts. She expressed some frustration that other schools were worried about losing students because of the four-day week.
“It kind of just leaves a sour taste because people are leaving North Woods because of budget cuts and we don’t care about that,” she said.
“I feel like it’s going to be bigger cuts next year if we wait,” Marinaro said. “It’s not going away.”
Superintendent Reggie Engebritson was responsive to the need for more details following the vote.
“We’ve got to get more answers, definitely,” she said. “The paras are first on my list, to try to show the hours that they’re currently working. What does it look like? There’s a possibility we may have more paras who want to work on Friday than we have openings. The rumor out there is that we’re going to cut them to 28 hours and that’s not accurate. Certainly, getting those details about school-age care worked out, transportation – are there any other questions you want me to keep looking at?”
The refrain from numerous members is that they want Engebritson to put a strong focus on timely communication with parents with as much information as possible.
“Open meetings is a good way because you’re face-to-face and get those questions and answers,” Bundy said. “At the least some kind of an email or text to go out to everybody to let them know what the updates are, how it’s coming, what are the concerns.”
“There are some ongoing dialogue and collaborations that are needed,” Koivisto said. “How are we going to reach out to stakeholders, parents, teachers, students and so forth to get the broader community to understand what we’re doing? One of the misconceptions that happened at our most recent meeting was the talk that our schools are closing. We should immediately be addressing that because the schools are not closing. That’s an important message to get out there.”
Koivisto also urged district officials to be consistent in their support. I know I voted against it, but I’m certainly not going to work against it – I’m going to support it. I know that all of us will. But certainly, we’re going to have folks at different levels who are going to want to work for or against that four-day school week. So, as much as we can as a school board (we need to) come together and support the four-day school week.”
Koivisto also encouraged district staff to look seriously at creative ways to provide enrichment activities on Fridays.
“There’s something we can provide and we’re going to have to look at ways in which we can provide something rather than nothing on those days,” he said.
The board also took several personnel actions to address next year’s budget shortfall.
They adopted a resolution placing seven continuing contract/tenured teachers on unrequested leave of absence. Those teachers and the full-time-equivalence of their positions include:
Amy Nelson, Title 1, North Woods, .53 FTE.
Marla Strom, Title 1, South Ridge, .8 FTE.
Christy Tuominen, instrumental and classroom music, South Ridge, .1 FTE.
Loreena Lenzen, social studies, Cherry, .1 FTE.
Erin Warren, communication arts, South Ridge, .3 FTE.
Makenzie Pierce, first grade, North Woods, 1.0 FTE.
Britt Axelsson, second grade, Northeast Range, .5 FTE.
The board also eliminated one position and reduced another at the district’s central office, both due to budget cuts. The Transportation Assistant position held by Piper Newman will be eliminated effective June 30. The Superintendent’s Administrative Assistant, Jeanne Sopp, will have her position reduced from full-time to 24 hours per week beginning July 1.