At Monday’s School Board meeting, both Arcadia and Prairie Creek charter schools gave their annual mid-year reports. The schools are required to do so, as the Northfield District is their authorizing body. While Northfield schools are bracing for a decrease in enrollment over the next decade, that is not the case with the charter schools. Superintendent Matt Hillmann: “What’s interesting is that we’re seeing more and more people from surrounding school districts who are choosing those charter schools. I think some people think it’s all Northfield kids who are going there. That’s not true anymore. There are quite a few students from surrounding school districts who are choosing Arcadia and Prairie Creek.”
Arcadia continues to draw from a wide range of surrounding districts, including Farmington, Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan, New Prague, Lakeville/Elko New Market, Kenyon-Wanamingo, Tri-City United, and Faribault, although the majority of the students are Northfield residents.
Prairie Creek continues to be a popular school with full enrollment and a robust waiting list at all grade levels.. Prairie Creek has 16.9% students of color, 15.3% free/reduced lunch students and 19.2% special education students.
Both schools’ budgets appear to be in good shape, with Arcadia showing a fund balance of nearly 34% and Prairie Creek sitting at 43%. “One of the important things about charter schools because they are much smaller, only 130 or 110 students, their financial situation really has to be managed incredibly well. Both of the schools have very solid fund balances because if either of them, which we don’t anticipate happening since they do have waiting lists at most grade levels, were to have a loss of enrollment that would really hurt their budget.”
Academically, students at Arcadia continue to meet all MN State standards through a combination of project and course work. Arcadia’s student reading (58.9% proficient) and science (54.8% proficient) MCA scores continue to exceed the state and local averages. Arcadia students’ math MCA scores increased to 44.1% achieving proficient scores in 2022-2023 compared to 38.6% of students in 2021-2022, years affected by Covid 19.
Prairie Creek students tested well above state averages in all categories… reading, math, and science.
Along with their academic and financial successes, Hillmann says he appreciates the different approach to learning that each school can uniquely supply, “Prairie Creek right now is engaged in putting together a school-wide opera. This is an example of how Prairie Creek focuses on integrating the arts and all of these kinds of things into their curriculum every single day. Arcadia really highlighted things, again they’re project based learning, around things like senior projects.”
You can contact either school for more information or enrollment options.
Rice County Jail
Construction of the Rice County Public Safety Center is rounding into the home stretch. Contractors are busy wiring, installing sheet rock, installing utilities and more. Preparations for county staff and jail detainees to occupy the 83,000 sq. ft. facility are being overseen by three county correctional staff members – Assistant Jail Administrator Stephanie Duhme, and Sgts Nick Bemis and Karie Francis. It’s their job to ensure the facility is fully stocked and operational the moment the first detainee steps inside.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Jesse Thomas is still ordering equipment and supplies for the new facility. He has recently encountered an unforeseen problem, “We did have, for our new use-of-force room for hands-on training, we priced out a new floormat, like a wrestling mat, a soft mat. Luckily I didn’t order it because it would have had our patch on it which has the state seal in it which the State has changed. That would have been a lot of money spent on something that we wouldn’t probably be able to use in the future.”
With the recent approval, Minnesota’s official seal and flag will change on June 14 which is Flag Day. As of now, Thomas says it is not known when they will be required to make the change, but they have a lot to change, “Everything we have has the state seal on it – so our patch, our badge, our squad graphics – you name it. I haven’t seen anything that says we have to change it; I haven’t seen anything that the State is going to give us any money which seems to be the case lately. I already got quotes on new patches as far as changing that design, and the squad cars will be easy because we can just put a sticker over that.” Meanwhile, the work will continue on the Public Safety Center, with plans on opening this summer.
Council Meeting Wrap up
The Northfield City Council met last night, their first meeting of the new year. Council voted to make Kathleen Holmes this year’s mayor pro tem.
They approved the path that would link Honeylocust Drive with the East Side Cannon River Trail. There was discussion on that, but in the end, with bids coming in lower than anticipated, the resolution passed by a 6-1 vote with only councilor Brad Ness dissenting, citing the cost/need ratio.
They also voted to ask the State Legislature for $3.5 million in bonding money for the Bridge Square improvement projects.
We’ll have more on these stories later in the week.
