Photo by Wanda Hanson
As the new school year began, it was time for the Houston School Board to welcome their new assistant principal, Angela McQuinn, as she attended her first school board meeting September 1. McQuinn has her office in the East Building and serves as the principal onsite for the Summit Learning Center, but also works in all the other brick and mortar buildings of Houston School. When asked by the board how it was going, McQuinn replied, “It’s good – I’m doing good!” McQuinn, who hails from Winona, served in a similar capacity at Pacelli Catholic Schools during the 2021-2022 school year.
The board said heartfelt goodbyes with gratitude to district office manager Anne Warner who will be retiring at the end of September. Commenting on their relationships, Warner declared, “We’ve learned a lot together!”
Meeting the needs of Houston special ed students
After concerns about whether HVED was adequately meeting the needs of their special education students, the Houston board has been exploring other options. A district special education director from another nearby school visited the meeting to answer the board’s questions about hiring their own director to run programs within the district. Pluses of such a program would be that the director would be in the school and focused on that one district. Superintendent Morem assured the board, “We’d get more bang for the buck!”
Chairman Tom Stilin commented that the board would have this year to plan and line up what they need. The contract for this coming school year has already been signed with HVED. He added, “We would be focusing on what we need.”
Josh Norlien asked if the funds currently spent with HVED would cover the expense and whether there were teachers available to be hired. Morem replied that with the connections with local colleges, the school could “grow their own” staff for the positions.
Photo by Wanda Hanson
Other schools in the area which provide for their special ed students in this way include Lake City, St. Michael’s of Albertville, and Pine Island.
The board has not totally committed to this plan, noting they still could decide to go with another group or continue with HVED. Gene Lundak noted that there has been a lot of push to get more funding for special education in the legislature. It was noted that Title 2 funds could be used to get people appropriately licensed for the school’s needs. HVED could also be contracted to provide portions of service needed.
SitelogiQ
Morem asked the board to decide whether they wanted to continue to retain SitelogiQ for community engagement on the potential building project. If the board chose to proceed with SitelogiQ, they would be committing to use their services if the project was given the green light by voters at a fee of 18.75% of the total project cost.
According to Morem, the recent summer project supervised by SitelogiQ had been rough. Morem felt that she had to be much more involved than she expected. Project managers at SitelogiQ had changed recently; the board had been satisfied in the past using SitelogiQ. Morem will speak with SitelogiQ about how the summer went and expectations for the future; the board decided to have them proceed with the group engagement piece, noting they would be able to make a decision on the project feasibility at a later date.
Other business
In other business the board:
• Set the amount of $20,000 as the upper limit that the facilities committee could spend on long-term facilities maintenance before requiring board approval (an increase from the previous $10,000);
• Approved the funding of NFHS live streaming for sports and activities; Houston American Legion will be donating $2,000 toward the $4,000 fee and had suggested that perhaps the snowmobile club might be interested in doing so as well;
• Set meal prices at the same as before the pandemic, changing only the cost of an adult lunch to $4.95;
• Recognized as Hurricane Heroes staff members, Mikayla Simmons, Marty Momsen, Brett Hoskins, and Travis Frank. The four made the summer enrichment program the success that it was.
The next Houston School Board meeting will be October 6 at 6 p.m. in the high school media center and streamed on the school website. The public is welcome to attend.
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