VIRGINIA- At Tuesday’s ISD 2142 school board meeting, Kristi Berlin, the district’s director of teaching and learning, presented the state-required annual “World’s Best Workforce” report, which targets goals for school readiness, closing achievement gaps, graduation rates, and attendance. The Minnesota Legislature passed a measure last spring revamping the World’s Best Workforce initiative, renaming it the Comprehensive Achievement and Civic Readiness initiative and establishing six goals that will be the framework for the 2025 report. Notable additions include a goal for third-grade reading levels and preparing students to be lifelong learners.
ISD 2142 hit the mark this past year for school readiness and graduation, Berlin said. Ninety-seven percent of the district’s pre-Kindergarten students received developmental screenings, while on the other end of the educational spectrum the district had a 91.5 percent graduation rate for 2023, slightly exceeding the target of 90 percent. That was significantly higher than the 83.3 graduation rate reported for schools statewide.
However, the news was not so good when it came to reducing the achievement gap for Native American students and students in the free and reduced-price (FRP) meal programs (as determined by family income).
As measured by scores on the eighth-grade Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment, achievement among Native American students dropped in both math and reading in 2023-24 compared to 2022-2023. Math achievement dropped from 5.6 percent to 3.4 percent, and reading achievement dropped from 25 percent to 6.9 percent. For the same years, math achievement among white students improved from 11.4 percent to 20.6 percent and reading achievement increased from 40.2 percent to 50 percent.
FRP students also fell behind in math in 2023-24, dropping from 19.1 percent achievement the prior year to 10.1 percent. Meanwhile, non-FRP students increased their achievement performance from 8.8 percent to 23.9 percent.
Both groups of students showed positive increases in reading achievement, with the FRP student gain of 13.8 percent to a level of 34.8 percent achievement, slightly exceeding that of non-FRP students, who improved 9.4 percent overall to 42.4 percent.
“We continue to struggle in our achievement gaps,” Berlin said. “You can see that our achievement gaps are not narrowing.”
Berlin talked about various strategies the district has either implemented or is investigating to address the issue, including looking at a new math program that will better support new teachers relative to state standards, working on targeted and small group interventions, and pursuing a grant to provide funds for additional educational support staff.
“We know this is an issue and we continue to work on it,” Berlin said. “We have a lot of things in place in the elementary (grades) to build on that. We continue to look at anything that we can do to bridge that gap and help teachers and students.”
Attendance is a goal that is closely related to academic performance, and Berlin said that continues to be a challenge for the district. While the goal was to increase the attendance rate to 78 percent in 2023, the district fell short, hitting just 69.8 percent.
“We are struggling with attendance, which is affecting a lot of our achievement scores,” Berlin said. “This has been worse since COVID because we got really used to during COVID not going (to school). And we do see attendance rates drop for our Native American students and our free and reduced students. We’re trying everything we can to get those kiddos to school. We send instant alerts, we send three-day letters, we have a meeting at seven days and we have a meeting at ten days. We will continue trying because it tends to impact all of the other areas.”
Achievement and
integration
ISD 2142 is one of approximately 180 districts that participates in the Department of Education’s Achievement and Integration Program, which fosters racial and economic integration and pursues increases in student achievement, creation of equitable educational opportunities, and reduction of academic disparities.
Director of Indigenous Education Kim Jordan delivered a report on last year’s program, which had a particular focus on Tower-Soudan Elementary due to a higher percentage of Native American students than at other elementary schools in the district, a level that categorizes it as “racially isolated,” she said.
Integration in this program does not involve having children attend different schools, but instead provides schools with culturally diverse learning experiences for students by interacting with students and staff from other schools and districts. For the first year of the project, Jordan said the district partnered with Mt. Iron-Buhl. Last year the district enhanced its plan by including all five schools in the district as well as MIB.
“It’s really helped our South Ridge and Cherry schools,” Jordan said. “We might have an event where South Ridge can come up and do an activity with Tower-Soudan or they can have an activity with Northeast Range. Just recently we had the art students from Northeast Range and North Woods travel with fifth and sixth grade students from Tower-Soudan to the Tweed Museum (of Art in Duluth) and they saw an Indigenous interactive display, because those three groups are going to develop a mural to be put in the Tower-Soudan School. That was an integration activity. We look for lots of fun activities like that to do.”
The program, which receives additional funding from the state, provides teachers with additional professional development opportunities, Jordan said. And the district has been able to increase student exposure to the Anishinaabe language.
“We have a teacher at North Woods School who is licensed in Anishinaabe language and culture, and we pay her salary out of this grant,” Jordan said. “She’s going once a week to a different school in our district.”
Jordan also talked about how the district is using Indigenous support advocates to not only increase student exposure to diverse staff but to enhance education about Native culture and language.
Jordan said that they will be assessing the program’s impact on academic proficiency this year after establishing baseline measures last year and indicated that she’s already seeing improvements.
“We’re doing a lot better, especially for our reading, and math is increasing as well,” she said.
Levy approval
Following a review of the proposed 2025-26 budget at a November working session, the ISD 2142 school board on Tuesday approved without comment a reduction in the district’s 2025 pay levy of 12.06 percent, which will reduce revenue by $859,302.
The levy decrease, from $7,123,512 to $6,264,210, reflects the decline in student numbers in the district, which have dropped by about 300 students from a pre-COVID level of 2,100 to 1,800. That’s according to comments made at the November meeting by district Finance Director Kim Johnson.
Superintendent Reggie Engebritson noted that the reduction was a percentage point more than what was originally projected. While school districts are required to approve their levies each year, they have no control over the levy amount, which is set by the Legislature and state statute.
The district projects a $1.3 million shortfall in the unassigned general fund for 2025-26, which will likely lead to further staff cuts to address the deficit.
No members of the public spoke at the Truth in Taxation meeting that came at the end of the regular board meeting.
In other business, the board:
• Welcomed new member Mallory Manick to her first official meeting since she was chosen by the board in October to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Nathan Briggs.
• Accepted a bid of $1,098,202 from Viita’s Excavating for the North Woods wastewater treatment plant project.
• Approved the 2025-26 school calendar with no significant changes from the current year.
Hired Keiza Besemann as an Indigenous Support Advocate I at Tower-Soudan.
• Hired Kate Perkins as a substitute van driver at Northeast Range.
• Hired Cindy Powell as a substitute bus driver at North Woods and T-S.
Hired Trudy Pelach as a substitute secretary at NW.
• Hired Travis Morrison as an assistant basketball coach at NW.