Letter from Superintendent/Principal

From Dr. Villebrun:

February 7, 2019

With only having two days of school last week, I decided to wait to do an update until this week. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate with us for the rest of winter and we will not have any more weather related cancellations or water line issues.

We had an amazing School of Excellence Celebration. From the cheers and laughter from the students, I think they enjoyed it. Our school is fortunate to have such great partnerships with the community. I appreciated having our mayor and Chief of Police as part of our celebration. We were also fortunate to have MN State Senator David Tomassoni and MN State Representative Julie Sandstede speak to the students. Please check out the school’s Facebook page for the school video and pictures of the celebration.

The School Board made a recent change to our attendance policy. If your child is absent from school following an evening sporting event, they will not be eligible to play in the first half of the team’s next sporting event. Consistent attendance is important to the success of our students. It is so important the state is keeping track of our school’s consistent attendance rate. The only absences not taken into consideration with consistent attendance are those school related absences like sporting events, college visits, etc. Otherwise, all other absences, excused or unexcused, are factored into the attendance rate.

There will be an informational meeting on Monday, February 11th regarding the upcoming operating referendum vote in April. Ehler’s Municipal Financial Advisory Group will be in attendance to present the information. This is a great opportunity to get answers to your questions from experts outside of the district.

We have been making cuts in various areas that do not directly affect the students. During my first year at Floodwood, we had five people working in the office. When one of the staff members resigned to take different job in the spring of 2017, the position was not filled. This person had a variety of job duties including payroll, accounts payable, food service, maintenance of student grade reporting and schedules, and was the front area school secretary in the afternoon. To save the district money, the duties of this person were given to other staff members. The payroll went to the business manager; the accounts payable and food service was assigned to the part-time front area school secretary; student scheduling and grading maintenance went to the School Counselor to name a few of the delegations.  Three hours a day was added to the part-time position so we would have someone in the front office the entire day.

Mrs. Jen Bartsch was nominated as Teacher of the Year. This is quite an honor! The final selection will take place this spring. We have amazing teachers at Floodwood, and Mrs. Bartsch fits right in. She is diligent in her efforts to improve the learning opportunities for her students and helping them to achieve success. She is also a great colleague and supporter of the staff. We are definitely rooting for Mrs. Bartsch!

Ms. Hart and I have just finished applying for the Pathway II funding and the Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten funding. These two sources of money help us to provide the excellent early childhood programming we have at Floodwood.

Thank you to Mrs. Bartsch and Ms. Waldron for applying and receiving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) grants! We look forward to see what great things your students will accomplish.

                         Floodwood School: Preparing all students to succeed.