Garrick A. Moritz, Garretson Gazette
The Garretson School Board met in regular session on Oct 10, with accreditation being the main item of focus, along with 2022-23 final student numbers, which are down overall.
Board Member Kari Flanagan was absent for this meeting, but all other members were in attendance, along with Business Manager Jacob Schweitzer and Principals Chris McGregor and Katie Hoekman.
The first item of business was the review and approval of the annual report for fiscal year 2022. Schweitzer said this was the smoothest the process has gotten since he’s taken the job.
The board approved the report, then chose Shannon Nordstrom to be the board’s delegate to the Associated School Boards of South Dakota assembly this year. The board will discuss their standing positions on the ASBSD’s legislative and policy agenda for the year at their next regular meeting.
Two policies were up for review on the agenda, re-aligning trust & agency accounts, and Student Safety Patrol.
The Trust and Agency accounts will all be reclassified as custodial accounts under new state and federal regulations. Board member Tana Clark asked Schweitzer about how many such accounts exist, and he said the number was more than twenty, with each class having their own fund and various activities/association each having their own fund. This did not include Blue Dragon Boosters, which keeps its own finances.
Next, the policy committee will bring either a revision for or recommendation to abolish the Student Safety Patrol policies.
Superintendent Guy Johnson said there hasn’t been a Student Safety Patrol in at least nine years, if not longer, and people in attendance were hard pressed to remember when the last time there was one. Board member Clark said that in her experience, such programs only work with direct adult supervision. The board will discuss it at the next regular meeting and decide then whether the program policy is worth revising, tabling, or simply eliminating the policy.
They had two first readings of student recruitment access to information, and notification to parents to release said information, and a second reading and approval of student records, which is a total rewrite of the policy to conform with ASBSD recommendations. The second reading was approved.
Next, Supt. Johnson talked about the Results Drive Accountability and Targeted School Improvement. This report and assessment was given to the school for accountability reasons due to absenteeism.
“Admittedly, a lot of this is hard to swallow,” he said. “The main criteria they use for identifying one of these schools is absentee rate. Well, our school has a 94 percent attendance rate and the average for schools in other districts is 86 percent.”
However, a few students in the economically-disadvantaged and special needs categories had large absence periods that the state took note of. Currently, only two of those six students still attend the Garretson School.
However, Supt. Johnson said that generally this could be a positive thing for the district as the state will help teachers and administrators develop targeted plans and allocate funding to students who likely need it the most. This brought up several discussion points about the school’s accreditation that the principals, superintendent, and board members would talk about later in the meeting.
Supt. Johnson then gave the board an update on the final student count that happened on Sept. 30th. In total, K-12 has 444 students this year. In all, 38 students left the district since last year. This is a mix of families moving, open-enrolling out to other districts, and in one case, of a student family choosing to home-school. Though 9 students applied to open enroll in, only 7 were approved. Two were not accepted because the school could not accommodate the particular needs of said students.
Elementary Principal Katie Hoekman gave her report, speaking about the accreditation process that had begun and the teacher in-service that was held last Friday.
Board member Clark asked Hoekman if what she’d heard was true, that it was taking more of the teacher’s time than ever to file the proper paper work with their lesson plans for the state accreditation.
Hoekman agreed that the process is more time consuming, but that their new system is efficient, and once everybody is using the same standards and system, it should be easier in the future.
“That’s only if the standards don’t change again,” said Clark.
Hoekman agreed that was a fair point.
High School/Middle School Principal Chris McGregor then took the floor.
“Homecoming was wild, and a pretty big success this year from everything I’ve seen,” said McGregor. “It’s not my first rodeo, but it is my first rodeo here in Garretson.”
McGregor was extremely complementary of everybody who volunteered their time and effort into making it a great day and a great week. Now that he’s learned the ropes, he said he’ll be able to make tweaks to make it even better for next year.
He also gave a report on the Challenge Day, in which about 40 students participated.
“Somehow, it’s coming up on the end of the first quarter already and I feel like I just walked in the door,” he said.
McGregor also made special note of the FFA students, whose sales team will be sending 8 students to the State contest.
Supt. Johnson then switched to the topic that already had been talked about some, the accreditation. Clark asked him if it seemed that the process was different and more complicated than it used to be. Supt. Johnson said it most certainly is.
“From my own experience over in Baltic, it’s seems like there is an awful lot more paperwork than there has been previously,” Clark said. “Some of the new teachers especially are expressing frustration that they simply don’t have the time do all of this plus their regular tasks. The report I just read said that statewide, South Dakota is already 300 teachers short of where we need to be. If we burn out new teachers, where are we going to end up? Not that I’m criticizing the Department of Education, but it does makes me ask, what are they doing?”
“Well, I can tell you that if they don’t realize that’s how we feel, then they’re not getting the message,” said Johnson. “I know the superintendent in Baltic has been one of the most vocal critics. The department used to send a team of people, dispatching them to the districts, they came in, checking documents and sat in on classes. Now it seems, we have to have all this documentation in hand to send them, and it’s simply a matter of ‘this is what we require of you.’ It feels like extra hoop jumping. I don’t know if there were budget cuts to the department, but there is definitely more work to the process on our end this time. At the same time, we obviously need accreditation and so we have to do whatever is required of us to make it happen.”
The Prairie Lakes Coop report was brief, as board member Jodi Gloe said the meeting lasted only about 5 minutes. The only item of note was that one of the councilors for the coop had been honored as school counselor of the year.
There were no further motions or any executive sessions and the meeting adjourned.
