The Becker School Board met last Monday to discuss procedural items, Dr. Stephen Malone’s report, unfunded school activities and strategic planning from the stakeholder input.

Student advocate Andrea Molus was also recognized for her participation as student representative.

 

Dr. Malone presented three documents to the board that included topics on strategic planning discussion, unedited top ideas with exit outcomes and a summary of the top ideas with exit outcomes.

 

Last month, the school board assigned the top ideas from each of the stakeholder categories to district exit outcomes. The ideas were ranked by a star rating  and it was decided the next step toward developing strategic goals was to synopsize the data or condense the information while maintaining fidelity.

 

Malone said some idea  titles were modified to match the ideas while ideas were summarized and separated by action and rationale. The star rating and stakeholder identification was combined with the idea title to eliminate two columns and alike ideas were combined.

 

Malone recommended the  board compare the unedited ideas document to the summary document and discern whether the summary of each idea captures the essence of the stakeholder’s submission and can the data be further synopsized.

 

The board discussed the documents and made suggestions. Chairman Aaron Jurek advised the board to look over the content further and said the board will discuss additionally in June after ideas are sent to Malone.

 

Dr. Malone said the Becker School District is in collaboration with Minnetonka, and has been approved by MDE as an Innovation Zone. Legislation —approved in 2014 — allows groups of school districts to work together to provide innovative education programming and activities and to share district resources.

 

Becker’s Innovation Zone approval is for the Innovation Campaign that the school will initiate this fall. Malone says all staff members will be invited to submit ideas and through crowd sourcing, staff members will rank, comment on and modify ideas. The top ideas will be selected for implementation during the 2017-18 school year. 

 

Malone said he has been working with Persevere Education Planning to develop financial planning software to help Becker students make better post-secondary financing choices and reduce their student loan debt. 

 

Becker High School is the first beta site in the U.S. to work with the software and give feedback to the developers. 

 

Students, teachers, parents and administrators will test the software later this month.

 

Becker High School students and their parents will have free access to the software for one year in exchange for Becker helping with the development. 

 

Malone referred to Andrea Molus, who he said was one of just two or three students recently to give the software a “run-through” and explain its benefits.

 

“It was a cool experience,” said Molus. It showed me about college expenses, tuition and debt and can show you objectives to pay things off.” 

 

Molus went on to say the program  can show youths their career choice, what their salary expectations are for that particular career and how to pay back the debt.

 

“It was truly a very eye-opening experience,” Molus said.

 

Malone gave a shout out to Becker teachers as National Teacher’s Day was about to be celebrated Tuesday. He gave a verbal “thank you” to the teachers and asked the public to let teachers know they are appreciated.

 

One of the goals from last year’s stakeholder input was to provide support for the unfunded school activities for the 2016-17 school year.

 

The school board conducted a workshop April 27 to discuss this issue and they decided to fund and manage the dance team ($10,401), the hockey team ($5,000), boys lacrosse ($6,595), trap shooting ($5,000), the marching band ($9,295) and the robotics team ($5,800).

 

Jurek thanked Andrea Molus for her service on the board and presented her with a certificate that said, “you are hereby recognized for your outstanding service as a school board student representative for the 2015-16 school year.”

 

The next Becker School Board meeting is June 6 at 6:30 p.m.