Hearing the passion for the work that you do is why we are here, so thank you for the work that you do.”

Dr. Tammy Champa, Superintendent

For more information on the school board meeting and to watch the full meeting, visit Hastings Community TV’s YouTube page at https://www.youtube.com/@HastingsCommunityTV

The District 200 School Board held its final meeting of 2024 to adopt its revised budget, discuss updates to the upcoming Pathways model, the future of HCTV in the high school.

Staff recognition and SPARK Grants
At the school board meeting, Superintendent Dr. Tammy Champa recognized the “staff of the semester,” staff previously recognized as staff of the month who came forward to speak about their role in the district. Staff recognized were High School Assistant Principal Chris Moore, English Learners teacher Brianna Dietz, Payroll Specialist Andrea Seleski, Language Arts teacher at Hastings Middle School Mary Pasch, Hastings Middle School Daytime Lead Custodian Brandon Bollig, and preschool teacher Anna Tlougan.
Next the school board heard from recipients of SPARK grants on what they will be doing with the roughly $50,000 distributed for causes ranging from rolling whiteboards at the high school to new robotic babies for home economics classes to the addition of clay to the Kennedy Art Department.
“Hearing the passion for the work that you do is why we are here, so thank you for the work that you do,” said Champa.

Revised 2024-2025 Budget adoption
At the meeting, the school board adopted the revised budget for 2024-2025 after hearing from Director of Finance and Operations Jen Seubert on an overview of the 2024-25 revised budget and changes to it from the budget when it was adopted.
The 2024-2025 budget is $80,334,09. Exactly 70% of the district’s revenue comes from state funding, with 27.5% coming from local sources. For general fund expenditures, over 70% are salaries, wages, and employee benefits, with another 18.4% for purchased services which are often contracted employees, meaning that nearly 90% of the district’s general fund expenditures come from staff. This rate is expected said Seubert considering that “school districts are really a people business.”
The key change discussed by Seubert was a decrease in enrollment of eight students from the adopted budget. This decrease is the latest in a long trend of declining enrollment that has seen some 500 fewer students in the district from just a decade ago, down to just over 4,000 students in the district in 2024.
This decrease in students comes with decrease funding per-pupil from the state. The eight fewer students translate to a decrease in funding by nearly $40,000. Seubert was quick to point out, however, that state funding has trailed behind inflation, especially in recent years. For the 2024-2025 fiscal year, Minnesota’s per-pupil allowance is $7,281. If that amount were to have kept up with inflation starting from the 2002-2003 fiscal year, the per-pupil allowance would be $8,645, an increase of $1,264 or 18.7%. The gap between actual allowance and rates adjusted for inflation grew significantly starting in 2021.
The payable 2025 tax levy is $20,988,913, decreased by $97,923 or 0.5% from 2024.
The school board voted unanimously both to adopt the revised 2024-2025 budget and the payable 2025 tax levy.

Pathways Update
Hastings High School Principal Scott Doran spoke before the school board about an update to the upcoming Pathways program for the district. The Pathways model is an overhaul to how classes and extra-curricular activities are presented to students, grouping them by potential career clusters including Arts, Communication and Information, Health and Human Services, and Business Management and Administration, among many others.
The Pathways system is designed to include more robust classes for students not planning on attending a four-year college program including working more closely with local businesses like Allina. “We are really ramping up our efforts,” of working with local businesses including the Hastings Chamber of Commerce said Doran.
This new model will greatly affect the class registration process for students with a new course registration guide. Doran shared an example of what this guide will look like at the meeting. One of the pages presented was on the career cluster “Innovative Industries and Technology,” with classes like Electronics, Metals, AP Chemistry, Calculus, and Physics. This wide swath of classes cuts through the divide of technical and college prep classes that previously existed in the high school.
Doran spoke to bridging this divide between classes using the example of an annual talk that happens within technical classes concerning ethanol.
“The cross-curricular ability of that conversation to happen, that industry to come in and talk to our kids, we haven’t tied that to chemistry in the past,” said Doran.
Departments will be working together to share similar experiences that cut across academic areas that might previously have been separated.
This recategorization is also meant to show where the school can provide better support to each career cluster along with identifying areas of need for those clusters.

Hastings Community TV
HCTV Executive Director Mike Bremer spoke before the school board about a potential rent concession from the district. As explained by Bremer, HCTV’s revenue comes from cable subscriptions which continue to dwindle in an age dominated by streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu.
“Due to these circumstances, our organization is facing a more than $30,000 shortfall on a less than $290,000 annual budget,” said Bremer.
HCTV’s proposed rent was $9,250 for this year, down from $18,500 the previous year.
“It maybe doesn’t sound like a lot, but when we are already coming up over $30,000 short for the 2025 budget, the additional $9,000 is really devastating,” said Bremer.
Prior to 2014, HCTV did not pay rent for the space it calls its home in the high school due to the amount of coverage and promotional material produced by HCTV for the district. “Approximately 80% of our content is school related,” said Bremer. In 2014, HCTV’s placement in the high school was “perceived to be a revenue source,” by the district said Director Mark Zuzek, and thus rent was charged.
Bremer provided the example of HCTV’s coverage of sporting events for the district. HCTV covers 65-70 events annually which costs the nonprofit $560 per game. This translates to anywhere from $36,400-$39,200 annually counting only staff and contractor pay. Similar services of “a Live multi-camera sports setup with a production crew from most companies would cost $4,000 to $6,000 or more per event,” said Bremer.
Other services provided by HCTV for the district include livestreaming and recording school board meetings, high school athlete letter signings, marching band preview shows, Raiders sports updates, school board candidate forums, among many others. The video playing in the background of the district’s new website was produced by the nonprofit. HCTV is also currently working on the Pathways promotional video for the upcoming Pathway model that releases in February.
In total, HCTV provides over $55,000 worth of services for the district, according to Bremer.
HCTV is currently looking for state funding for community TV stations, but those funds could still be years away.
“We are trying to survive basically until this additional funding arises by pulling money from our savings […] if rent were to be imposed on our already negative budget, we would be forced to induce further cuts, jeopardizing our content and the longevity of HCTV,” said Bremer.
“I just can’t speak highly enough of the partnership,” Champa said about the work HCTV has done and continues to do for the district.
The board voted unanimously to waive the $9,250 rent for HCTV.

Data requests
For the final data request update of the year, Human Resources Director Cathy Moen told the board that the district had received one new data request, and was currently working on two requests. Legal bills relating to data requests since the last school board meeting totaled $75.
Director Jessica Dressely also spoke to her and Chair Carrie Tate’s experience at the Minnesota School Board Association’s Delegate Assembly where among other resolutions passed, the MSBA moved forward with a resolution to “to amend the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act to authorize the responsible authority in a school district to require a person to identify themselves by full legal name and to a amend Minnesota Government Data Practices Act to authorize the responsible authority to access and recover actual cost of searching and retrieving government data, if the requesting individual abandons or fails to inspect the data once it has been prepared.”
It was a resolution put forth by the ISD 200 School Board in the face of continued large data requests from anonymous sources that have cost the district thousands of dollars in legal fees in recent years. Now the resolution will be among those lobbied for by the MSBA during the upcoming legislative session.
For more information on the school board meeting and to watch the full meeting, visit Hastings Community TV’s YouTube page at https://www.youtube.com/@HastingsCommunityTV