To: ISD 300 Board of Education and Superintendent Wilke From: Beth

To: ISD 300 Board of Education and Superintendent Wilke From: Beth Theede, Director of Community Education May 2015 Report Early Childhood Work It’s a busy time of year in Discovery Preschool! Our 4K students had a great field trip to Bauer’s Market last week, as a part of their study of trees and plants. Thank you to Bauer’s for welcoming our students and giving a great tour. Staff continue to work through planning for the changes for next year with the expansion of the Minnesota Reading Corps services. Coordinator Karn Schwartzhoff has been doing an excellent job facilitating these conversations as both the program coordinator and the designated MN Reading Corps “Internal Coach.” Karn is also in the process of collecting year-end information from families, including the state required demographic information, feedback on how they feel we did teaching their child this year, and other information relating to educational needs of parents/families. School Age Childcare Summer registration is underway, as is finalizing our summer staffing. Lisa Mattson has been doing an excellent job learning the ropes of preparing for her first summer at Kids’ Company. We are initiating a plan to utilize our elementary MN Reading Corps Tutor, Alicia Waters, to infuse our programming with more reading opportunities. (She is “on assignment” until the end of June). Grandma Barb (Tessmer) will once again be providing her one on one reading time with kids all summer long as well. Enrichment We participated in both Summer Youth Registration events with the City of La Crescent this year (instead of the traditional Saturday only) and we received positive feedback and we received many registrations at both events. Several of our youth programs have filled to capacity, so we are seeking other way to accommodate the overflow of students. Special thanks to Joan Wright, Operations Coordinator, for organizing a very smooth process for our busiest time of year. Budget Work The past month has been highly time intensive with budget revision for current year and budget preparation for next year. The revisions you will review at the May board meeting for Community Education are a combination of adjustments that include accurately reflecting salary and benefit agreements and retroactive compensation for several employees, corrected line item amounts that were keyed incorrectly last year, and adjustments for programs that are exceeding projections. As I know you all are, we are holding our breath for the legislative actions that will determine the fate of preschool programming for the future. Two of the three proposals that were put forth prior to conference committee would have significant impact on our local budget, with the Governor’s plan that would add significant responsibility to Fund 01.