February News and Notes - High School Edition

Spring has agreed to give us a sneak preview over the next 5-10 days!  I see multiple days of 60 degree weather coming our way!  What a great gift in the month of February!  It won’t be long and the grass will start to turn green and we’ll see leaves on the trees!    

Our juniors took a practice ACT today here at school.  We made the testing environment as authentic as we could!  We turned off the bells, set the scoreboard timer, and got a good practice session in!  The REAL THING takes place on 2/28!  

I want to wish our Wrestlers good luck tonight and hopefully on Saturday!  Show them what Vikings are made of!  

Good luck to the girls and boys basketball teams as they head into the postseason!  Both teams have had great seasons and will be feared in the playoffs!

A special congratulations to Lydia Sussner for scoring her 1,000th point the other night!  Lydia is a good basketball player, a great student, and an even better person.  Many young Vikings look up to her!  Well done, Lydia!  

I got the opportunity to mock interview roughly ½ of the Class of 2017 over the past two weeks as part of an assignment in Language Arts 12 with Mrs. Opdahl.  They worked on everything from the handshake to asking follow-up questions at the end of the interview.  I asked some tough questions and they handled them quite well!  I’ve been impressed with the maturity and overall behavior of this senior class!  It won’t be long and they’ll be walking across that stage in May with their caps and gowns!

We are still searching for an Ag/Shop teacher/FFA advisor for the 2017-2018 school year.  We’ve interviewed a few candidates but we are finding that many of the recent college graduates are very Agriculture-based with their skillsets and are lacking in the shop skills.  Most of our class offerings here in Minneota are shop-related and I believe we should offer SHOP and AGRICULTURE to our students.  We will continue to advertise and will continue to be aggressive in our search.  We want the very best teacher we can get for our students...they deserve it!  

Registration season is quickly approaching!  There will be information on registration coming your way during the month of March.  

Did you know that 93 of our 7-12 students made either the A or Straight A honor roll at semester?  Did you know that 51 of our 7-12 students made the B honor roll?  It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to accomplish these feats!  I’m proud of how hard our students work.  

The last day of the 3rd quarter is March 10.  

You can follow Minneota Public Schools on Facebook and on Instagram...simply search for:  minneotapublicschools  

Enjoy the weather and enjoy rooting for our Vikings as they enter the postseason!

February News and Notes - Elementary Edition

It’s February but it looks and feels more like March!  We’ll take it!  I know the kids prefer getting outside for recess vs being crowded in the gym on those cold days.  

I Love to Read month is in full-swing here in the Elementary School!  The kids are having fun with the reading-related activities!  A special thanks to Nancy Dilley for organizing all the fun activities!  Are you taking time to read to your child at night?  I know in my house, I’m down to one kid left who likes Mom and Dad to read stories...they grow up so fast!  Enjoy those moments with your child, they will look back fondly at those moments of Mom and Dad reading stories!         

The lost and found collection is starting to grow once again.  When you are in the building, take a walk and check out the lost items and claim your child’s clothing!  The lost and found will be reset at the end of the school year.  

We applied to have MN Reading Corps for the 2017-2018 school year.  We applied for ½ time and a ½ time preschool emphasis.  Once we are approved, we’ll be advertising to find people to fill those roles!

There will be Community Ed Volleyball Forms coming home soon.  I will e-mail a digital copy and send home a hard copy very soon!  

The Cheerleading Camp hosted by Andrea Knutson and Melinda Drietz was a success!  The girls performed at halftime of the girls game last night and had a blast!  Over 40 girls participated!

Remember, there is NO SCHOOL on Friday, February 17, and there IS SCHOOL on February 20 (due to a snow day makeup).

Thanks for sharing your child with us at Minneota Public Schools!  

Jeremy W. Frie

K-12 Principal

A thanks and a transparent explanation...

I want to extend a sincere “thank you” to Matt Myrvik (Head Athletic Director) and Wade Gillund (Assistant Athletic Director) for all their hard work and efforts as they continue to lead the athletic department for the remainder of the school year.  A special “thank you” goes to Matt for taking an already successful department and making it better.  Matt is excellent at communicating to all stakeholders, thorough with all his duties, and he has approached the job with the utmost professionalism.  It was for the above reasons that we offered to remove the interim label by offering Matt a full-time Activities Director/Groundskeeper position for the 2017-2018 school year and beyond.  After deliberation, Matt has decided it wasn’t the right position for him going forward.  He leaves big shoes to fill in our school district but I appreciate the fact that he’ll still be working with our student athletes as an assistant coach on the football field and with our youngest wrestlers in the youth wrestling program.

Why did we decide to combine the Activities Director Position with a Groundskeeping position?  

The current structure was a band-aid for our school district and it was determined that the structure wasn’t an ideal one, especially for Matt.  He works a full-time job in Marshall, coaches football and youth wrestling, and was serving as Head Athletic Director. Did I mention he has a family too?  It was a structure that simply had to change.  School districts our size simply don’t have a full-time athletic director.  We, along with many other districts, don’t believe that the job is big enough to warrant a full-time, year-long position. When doing our research we found that schools our size combine the Activities Director Position with something to create a full-time position.  Some schools combine it with the principal position, some schools combine it with a teaching position, and others combine with with something different.  We have a need for an Outdoor Groundskeeper here in our district and we have a need for an Activities Director.  I believe we can do much better in terms of making our outside more beautiful...it just needs some TLC and a person who will accept the challenge.

So...we are posting a full-time Activities Director/Groundskeeper position in hopes of finding the right person to come in and fill big shoes in our Activities Department and someone who is willing to improve the outside aesthetics of our campus.  We’re hoping that the full-time position will attract someone to the job, and that person will stay for a while, slowing down the current turnover rate of the position.  We don’t know if the right person will apply...if not...it’s back to the drawing board!