Greetings and Happy March!
It’s been an exciting March thus far! It’s been an absolute joy to watch the boys and girls basketball teams magical postseason runs! As you sit in the stands watching our Vikings compete, make sure you appreciate the hard work and dedication it took to GET THERE! We had 50+ female athletes signed up for a summer weightlifting class run by Kaley Buysse, Brad Gillingham and Jesse Nelson. When I share that statistic with other schools, they were immediately impressed and then begin to understand our culture and work ethic here at MPS! I see our male athletes in the weight room at 6:15am several times a week, all year long! The dedication and commitment to excellence is amazing!
My hometown of Byron, MN is sending their girls basketball team to the state tournament for the first time IN THE HISTORY OF THE SCHOOL! We have it great here in Minneota, especially when it comes to watching our high school athletes compete! Never take “making it to state” for granted because you just never know if it will be the last time in many years!
We’ve gotten most of our students registered for the 2018-2019 school year. We still have some registration sheets to collect from Lincoln Elementary and our 6th grade but we are close! Some highlights and news regarding registration:
- The two-hour Building Trades class is a GO! Let the building begin!
- OJT (On the Job Training) is a GO! This program will be run by Mrs. Ruth Bot and will give students the opportunity to explore careers out in the community!
- We will be offering a Spanish 1 and a Spanish 2 class next year.
- Band and Choir will go back to the same hour again next year. The goal remains the same: provide more time for our band and choir to practice, learn new music, provide lessons, etc. Students that AREN’T in both band and choir will still have music instruction on those days where the full group isn’t meeting vs having a study hall. This will provide choir only and band only students with more instruction in those respective classes. Students may alter their registration sheets next Monday-Wednesday (3/19-3/21) if they’d like to add/drop band and/or choir for the 2018-2019 school year. Students should see Mrs. Knutson to make changes.
- Since we can’t get approval for CollegeNow Stats through SMSU, we have reached out to Minnesota State University, Mankato and it looks promising! More information will be coming as we get it! We WILL be offering CollegeNow Trig and CollegeNow Algebra. The stats class will be an addition to those classes.
- Weightlifting class was wildly popular and will be offered in two semester-long classes.
- Physics of Robotics was also very popular and will be offered to upperclassman first in order to offer appropriate class sizes.
- Drafting did not have enough students to be offered.
- CollegeNow Intro to Computers will be offered. We will not be offering the CollegeNow Fundamentals of Programming due to low enrollment. We simply don’t have enough Science teachers to offer both of these classes.
- Digital Media is a GO!
- Fitness for Life was extremely popular and we will be offering it in two semester-long classes to make the class sizes more manageable. We’re exploring more field trip options to enhance this class.
As the principal, it’s part of my job to make sure we are offering classes that students find challenging and classes that students enjoy. Some new classes are popular and “go” and some classes aren’t popular and don’t “go”. The students ultimately have the big say in which classes they register for and which ones they don’t. I’m learning that students are exercising their freedom of choice and tend to gravitate towards those teachers they feel a “connection” with. For evidence of that theory, 23 students signed up for a Physics class. 23 seniors willingly signed up for a challenging science elective, that isn’t offered for college credit. To me, that’s a compliment to the teacher! As a school, we are experiencing a drop in enrollment due to online classes being offered. Currently we have over 30 students planning to take an online class through a different institution. Students have the right to take these classes but it affects the enrollment in the electives that we offer here in our school. This isn’t a MPS issue but a statewide issue. We hope to offer enough college classes in the near future that students stay in school with our teachers while earning free college credits!
School Safety
Recently, I met with the senior class to collect their ideas on how we can make our school more safe in the future. I was impressed with their maturity and they provided a couple of really good ideas that we will explore! I plan on having this same discussion with the junior class sometime before the school year is out. As an administration, we are making procedural changes and looking at more options to provide a safer school. While we can’t make our school 100% safe from everything, we can certainly constantly make improvements and be the safest we can possibly be!
Some upcoming events:
On April 5, the NHS will host their annual Blood Drive in the Competition Gym. There will be more information coming regarding this event.
MCA Testing and ACT Testing season is nearly here! It’s great to see so many juniors enrolled in our ACT prep class before school!
If you’d like to follow us on Social Media:
Minneota Public Schools on Facebook
Minneota High School on Instagram
Twitter:
@principalfrie on Twitter
Here’s to hoping that the warm weather is on the way! We deserve a nice spring! As always, if you have questions or concerns about something here at school or you’d like to pass along a compliment about one of our teachers/staff, please don’t hesitate to contact me!
