People in attendance to split into groups, discuss aspects

Albert Lea Area Schools Superintendent Mike Funk on Monday gave the school board a rundown of what is planned for the hearing tonight on the proposed adjusted school calendar.

Bruce Miles of St. Cloud-based Big River Group will be at the forum to facilitate. A quorum of school board members will be present as well.

Funk said participants will sit in small groups at tables and Miles will go through different topics. Each group will discuss the topics. At the end of the forum, each group will talk about what was discussed at their table.

Setting a date for the third forum was also discussed. The second forum will be at 7 p.m. Oct. 14 at the high school commons. The third forum will be Oct. 30.

Jim Quiram, director of technology and human resources, presented a draft of the proposed calendar for staff. The Minnesota Department of Education requires districts to present both a student calendar and staff calendar for schedule changes.

There are three opportunities for intensive staff development, Funk said. There are three weeks the staff could choose among: one week in July, one week in October and one week in March.

Staff would pick one week to do staff development and Funk and Quiram said there may be a possibility to split the development up among the three weeks.

Quiram said the advantages to this is that there can be more of a focus on staff development. He explained that most staff development is ad hoc and pulls teachers out of the classroom.

After Quiram’s presentation, Mindy Kruger of the Albert Lea Education Association read a statement saying that the teachers’ union supports the proposed calendars because of the potential impact on student engagement and achievement.

School board president Linda Laurie made a motion to omit the Oct. 6 school board meeting and to designate Oct. 14 and Oct. 30 as dates for the last two public forums. The motion was approved.

In other business, the school board:

• Swore in two new student school board members. The new student school board members are Gabriel Minear and Quinn Peterson. Minear is a senior who is involved with student council, public relations, show choir and football. Peterson is a junior who is involved with soccer, basketball, student council, Youth in Government, youth group, Cru, Sunday school and chorale. Student members advise the board but do not have voting powers.

• Discussed a possible joint powers agreement with the city of Albert Lea. Funk said the school and the city are looking at sharing services to be more efficient. One of these services Funk mentioned was Community Education. Funk said more will come on this topic in the future.

• Approved a proposed 2014 pay 2015 certified levy at maximum. The levy went down by 1.4 percent, or $111,000. Lori Volz, director of finance and operations, said the bulk of the decrease was in the health and safety levy.

• Approved a memorandum of understanding to be sent to the Minnesota Department of Education for a preschool grant. This grant would expand preschool programming for 4-year-olds. Albert Lea is one of five districts seeking this grant, along with Austin and Rochester. The grant would give $7,200 per student. With 180 students, that equals nearly $1.3 million. The district will be notified in December if it has received the grant and planning would then begin in January.

• Looked at a revised bullying statute. Some of the definitions in the statute have been updated, including the definition of bullying itself.