As students pick out classes for the fall semester, the revamped course guide and registration process highlights the current state of Pathways within ISD 200.
It was discussed at last week’s regular school board meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 28.
The school board also heard from Rep. Tom Dippel (R – Cottage Grove), who promised to author a bill that would let schools know about their finances earlier to allow more time to plan.

Pathways
Last week at the regular school board meeting, Director of Teaching and Learning Andrew Hodges and Hastings High School Principal Scott Doran showcased the new course guide and registration process which features layers of options for students from core curricula to pathway advancements to class “enhancements.”
The new course guide came from a series of five meetings of teachers, counselors, staff and Superintendent Kristine Wehrkamp Herman.
“Really in our role, we sat back and facilitated, answered questions. It was really the work of teachers, educators there,” said Hodges.
Hodges specifically mentioned Bert Casperson, high school art teacher, who designed the new course guide.
“He took the vision of the team and put it all together,” said Hodges.
That course guide separates classes out into three categories: requirements, advancements, and enhancements.
Requirements are core curricula like math and reading, with advancements laying out classes that could lead into specific careers. Enhancements are electives meant to “grow you as a person,” like yearbook, art, and music, according to the ISD 200 website.
A push of the revamp was to make sure that both parents and students had access to registration information which was previously not readily apparent on the district’s website. Hodges noted that making registration information more accessible could also be a tool for recruiting new families to the district.
While Hodges and Doran were quick to highlight new classes in the high school like the Healthcare Professionals and culinary classes, they were hesitant about building out the pathways program too quickly.
“We want to be really intentional with this development process. It’s easy to get really excited about a course that comes across your desk, right? It’s really easy. But we want to make sure that we are developing these progressions for students,” said Hodges
Even in a district without declining enrollment, adding new classes is tied to sunsetting older classes to guarantee there are enough students to offer classes in the first place.
“You can’t just add and add and add. What you do is thin out the herd and now you’ve got classes not running,” said Doran.

Legislative update
The board also shared their legislative priorities with Dippel, who offered to author a bill to mandate fiscal notes for financial changes to school districts and setting dates on when those bills come into effect to allow districts more time to plan.
The board unanimously approved eight legislative priorities ranging from repealing or fully funding paid leave and summer-term unemployment insurance, repealing the $250 million cut to special education cross-subsidy reduction aid, and allowing school boards more leeway in transferring balance surpluses.
Dippel echoed many of these legislative priorities, saying, “They functionally match up relatively well to the things I’ve already talked to the chairs of the education policy and education finances committees. They acknowledge these things as being issues […] they’ve continuously heard from school districts that this isn’t a theoretical problem or something that we think might affect us negatively. It is affecting us negatively and we do need to take action on that.”
Director Zuzek called the scheduling of school funding absurd: “We don’t find out how much money we have until our fiscal year has already started for the operating school year ahead of us. We have to make staffing decisions in April, some in March, it’s just absurd the way schools are funded late.”
Dippel encouraged Zuzek to send him more information about the issue but said that he would author the bill and help it get through committee, where Dippel sits on both the Education Finance and Education Policy committees.
“I’m hopeful, I really am,” said Dippel.
Dippel was optimistic about the upcoming session even given the historically small margins across the House of Representatives and Senate.
“It ended up turning out quite civil, actually. I think everybody knew that there’s only so much that each side of the aisle could do and it sort of moderated itself within all of the committees,” said Dippel.
School Board Chair Carrie Tate’s ask of Rep. Dippel was for “any and all efforts you can put forth to ensure financial stability to school districts moving forward.”
“You have my word on that,” said Dippel.