By Melanie Stegner

Reporter 

Tammie Williams Quiggle was recognized at last week’s school board meeting for her work and dedication to students at Minnewaska Area Schools and the special education program. “She spends countless hours before and after school preparing and meeting with students and parents to ensure the students are receiving the best programming they can,” said MAS Superintendent Chip Rankin. 

Donations to the school were accepted at the meeting totaling $20,043.42. Enrollment at the school is currently 1,285, and teachers and staff have started using Linewize, a computer program that detects what students are doing on their devices. Parents are also able to use Linewize. 

The Dollars for Scholars scholarship banquet was recently held. According to Mary Walsh, $198,000 in scholarships were handed out to 59 seniors at MAS. “A huge thank you to everyone that supports these programs,” she stated.

Jen Jabas, Executive Director of United Way of Douglas and Pope Counties attended the meeting to give a presentation on their Living United program. This year the United Way collected projects for the Day of Caring to share with the school. 800 students completed 40 projects cleaning the community. The Backpack Attack Program is a program that will provide food for those in food crisis. WIN Academy packed and stored 800 bags of items and MAS packed 1,400 bags in the last two years. 100 bags go out each week and on average 3,300 bags go out to students in need. 

The United Way also did a Stuff the Bus Program to aid struggling families in collecting supplies and backpacks for students. They also offer a program to supply those in need with warm clothes in the winter months. “There are more programs we hope to bring in the future as well,” she mentioned.

Katie Elenberger from Spark 27 was in attendance to discuss the contract the school holds with the company. “We’ve done several marketing projects including the tech levy campaign, the newsletter, back to school, scoreboard advertising, Worlds Best Workforce documents, brand guidelines and vendor style guide, form updates, print ads, career pathways information, paid social media advertising and a series of videos for Why MAS featuring two-minute interviews with staff and students.” 

They’ve also spent time on keeping the website, news stories and updates to health services current including Little Lakers, photo updates and several others. Their work has driven traffic to the school’s website at an increase of 30,000 sessions over the last year.

Staff from the before and after school program, ECFE and Laker Legends program were on hand to share some of their statistics from their programs. Audrey Frye directs the Before and After School programs. The before school program averages 18-20 students and the after-school program averages between 65-70 students. 

The Preschool/ECFE programs are successful with 79 students registered for fall in the preschool program. The ECFE Family Programs averaged about 15 families taking advantage of the program. 

The Laker Legends program had 84 kids enrolled last summer, a huge jump from the six kids that were enrolled in 2020. They’ve taken kids on field trips to AirMax, the zoo and several other places. This year they have plans for 16 staff members in six rooms.

In other action the board approved a memorandum of understanding agreement with the Minnewaska Teachers Association on substitute teaching, approval of membership to the Minnesota State High School League, approval of a call for bids for milk for fiscal year 2025, established dates for filing of affidavits of candidacy to begin on July 30 and end on August 13, approve Angie VanZee as election clerk and approved a first reading on some of the minor changes to the 24-25 school year handbooks and policies.