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School board delays vote on BOLD proposal BY JACKIE BUSSJAEGER STAFF WRITER
STILLWATER – On Thursday, Feb. 11, after a listening session held before the school board, the board voted to delay the vote on the BOLD proposal. School Board Member Mike Ptacek was the only one to vote against the recommendation to delay. The vote has officially been pushed back to March 3. The BOLD proposal cites slow projected population growth in the northern part of Washington County and an uneven distribution of resources and services across the schools as grounds to close Marine, Withrow and Oak Park Elementary effective 2017-18. Superintendent Denise Pontrelli recommended the delay because she felt additional time was needed for parents to understand the details of the proposal. On Feb. 10, a notice of claim was filed against the 834 school district by the parent group 834 VOICE (Voters Interested in our Children’s Education) in the event that the BOLD proposal was accepted. “It’s clear that there’s not an understanding with what our process was with the data,” Pontrelli said. Members of the board acknowledged the problems that have occurred within the district since the introduction of the BOLD proposal in late 2015, citing an unproductive divisiveness between parents in the northern part of the county, parents in the southern part of the county and members of the board. “Whatever our disagreements are, as part of 834, the cause of divisiveness is only our choice in how we see each other,” said school board member Amy Burback. “We’ve been asked, as a community, to hit pause.” The decision comes after weeks of opposition groups, including 834 VOICE and Stop Bold Cold, lobbying for more time before the board’s decision. Once it became clear that the board would likely stall the vote for SEE DELAYED VOTE, PAGE 12
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Sharon Lennartson, the speaker at the Feb. 14 NAPAC family presentation, displays different Dakota cultural items, including a blanket. Nick Lennartson, right, is dressed in traditional dance regalia to teach families about Dakota ceremonies.
Native history highlighted in new educational series BY JACKIE BUSSJAEGER STAFF WRITER
STILLWATER – A new series of monthly programs is bringing local Native American culture to the wider community. These monthly family presentation sessions, hosted by the Stillwater Native American Parental Advisory Committee (NAPAC), take place at the Stillwater Public Library, and are free and open to the public. Any Minnesota school with ten or more students of American Indian heritage is required to have a committee of parents who advise the school about the needs of American Indian students and their education. However, NAPAC has never before received state funding until this year, when it received a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education. Denise Stephens is a member of NAPAC, and has grandchildren currently enrolled in the district. “The statute has been around for a
while, district had federal funding but the state statute was never funded,” Stephens said. “This is the first year they’ve allocated money. It’s part of the effort to close the achievement gap—over the years there’s been a lot of talk about how to close the achievement gap and what we’ve learned with native communities is that they teach their people in a different way from traditional teaching. Their style of teaching is a little different. So by having NAPAC, the native people can teach their own and help schools close that achievement gap.” With the addition of state funding, NAPAC initiated an education series mostly to teach children of Native American heritage about their cultural roots and traditions. The series began in December, and since it is mainly intended for families with school-age children, will end along with the school year in the spring. “We started with bringing in visiting artists to the valley every month,” Stephens said. “We started out slowly
because we didn’t know what kind of a reaction we would get from the community as far as how many people would show up. We didn’t have a good way of publicizing what we were doing either.” However, the series began to gain attention, and the committee enlarged the event to a larger learning session, taking place at the Stillwater Public Library. “They did a presentation that we started calling a family presentation, because we wanted children in the school district who are Native American to be able to learn some of the history of their heritage and culture from people who are experts in the area,” Stephens said. “As we were seeing the caliber of people who were coming and the kind of information we were getting, we decided to publicize it a little bit more. We started encouraging anyone who is interested in learning about the culture to come and bring their families.” SEE EDUCATIONAL SERIES, PAGE 12
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