I would fear in sunsetting this, what signal that would send.”

Director Matt Bruns

For more information on the District 200 School Board, visit www.hastings.k12.mn.us/page/school-board

The Wednesday, Feb. 19 school board work session heard from principals across the district on updates from the schools, discussed sunsetting the district’s Equity and Diversity policy and finalized its legislative priorities.
The work session was also the first meeting of the school board after the passing of Jenny Wiederholt-Pine and began with a moment of silence in remembrance. A candle was lit at her empty seat during the meeting with board members speaking about her “get back to work” motto, her perpetual availability to field long phone calls from her fellow board members, and the community outpouring at her wake which had lines stretching out into the cold with community members waiting hours to pay their respects.

Principal’s update
The board first heard from Middle School Principal Ryan Wynn and High School Principal Scott Doran. A key metric discussed across both schools was the number of student referrals over the past three months as compared to the first two months of the school year. At the middle school, there were 943 student referrals in the past three months, a sharp increase from the 465 referrals that occurred in September and October. Wynn explained that the rise in referrals is partially due to teachers working to better track student behaviors and thus reporting more referrals for various behaviors from cell phones to non-exclusionary intervention.
Conversely, the high school saw a reduction of referrals across the board with a steep drop in cell phone referrals, according to Doran.
Kennedy Principal Kyle Latch, McAuliffe Principal Matthew Esterby and Pinecrest Principal Paul Bakker also spoke before the board on the district’s elementary schools. The number of referrals at the elementary schools dropped from 247 referrals in the first two months of school to 234 in the subsequent three months.
“It really does feel like we’re having a reduction,” said Latch.
Treasurer Mark Zuzek asked the principals if the incoming youngest classes were returning to pre-pandemic norms. The principals seemed to think so.
Esterby called the types of referrals seen “more typical behavior,” than during the pandemic continuing, “it feels like they are ready to learn sooner.” Esterby referenced the incoming kindergarteners who would have had more typical experiences socializing, potentially less affected by the pandemic than their older peers.

Equity and Diversity Policy
The board discussed sunsetting ISD 200’s Policy 100: Equity and Diversity. The policy originated in 2018 during a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiative undertaken by city officials, school board members and community members across the Hastings area. It is not based on any Minnesota School Board Association (MSBA) model policy.
“It was really a grassroots thing,” said former school board chair Kelsey Waits on the initiative.
On April 29, 2018 the school board issued a joint proclamation with the Hastings City Council titled “All are Welcome!” The proclamation states, “Hastings will rise to be a community where all persons will receive fair treatment and full access. In Hastings, ‘All are Welcome!’”
At the May 7, 2018 city council meeting following the proclamation, Mayor Paul Hicks referenced three tenants he saw as central to the proclamation: we welcome all people, we think all people matter, all people are valued.
“That’s where my perspective is on this resolution […] If we follow that as a community, I think we all benefit.”
Following the proclamation, throughout 2018 several meetings were held at the Hastings YMCA with the “goal of identifying challenges of diversity and inclusion in Hastings and creating an action plan to help deal with those challenges,” according to a December 2018 article from the Republican Eagle Newspaper.
The school board would later adopt policy 100 in May 2021 as a way of “formalizing that proclamation,” said Waits. The policy was based in part on the diversity and equity statement implemented in Stillwater while under the supervision of former Superintendent Dr. Bob McDowell.
ISD Policy 100 states:
“Hastings Public Schools is committed to the success of every student in each of our schools and to our mission and vision statements.
“The Hastings Public School District believes that the responsibility for student success is broadly shared by District staff, families, the community, and our students’ own efforts. The purpose of this policy is to establish a framework for the elimination of racism and bias, including cultural bias, as factors affecting student achievement and learning experiences, and to promote learning and work environments that welcome, respect, and value diversity.”
The policy defines diversity to include but not be limited to “race, culture, color, creed or religion, national origin, biological sex, mental and physical ability, age, marital status, family structure, citizenship status, sexual orientation or affectional preference, gender identity or expression, and economic status,” among others.
Based on this definition, the policy states that the district “welcomes, respects and values the diversity of its students, parents, staff and broader community,” is committed to “advancing equitable participation in, contribution to, benefit from and enjoyment of learning and work experiences by diverse students, parents, staff, and community,” providing equitable distribution of resources, opportunities, facilities, and support, as well as “the recruitment and retention of highly qualified diverse staff.”
At the workshop, Vice Chair Jessica Dressely and Chair Carrie Tate were critical of the policy and recommended sunsetting it. Dressely called the policy “divisive,” with Tate saying, “Honestly, I think this was made for political purposes.”
In recommending sunsetting the policy, Tate referenced the Friday, Feb. 14 letter from Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor that threatened “potential loss of federal funding,” to educational institutions that do not end “overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this Nation’s educational institutions.”
The Trainor letter explicitly references diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts as a program that “discriminate[s] in a less direct, but equally insidious way,” and therefore could affect federal funding.
“This is two of those letters in that, so yeah I am concerned […] I see it as a risk,” said Tate about Policy 100.
Other board members disagreed.
Treasurer Zuzek referenced the recent sunsetting of policies relating to the COVID-19 pandemic: “We sunset that because it’s gone. It’s managed and we don’t need to deal with it, but we still need to deal with equity.”
Zuzek spoke to the creation of Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) Program at the high school as a specific effect of this policy. The AVID program is designed to close the opportunity gap within schools across the county by providing college preparation. “AVID may not have started if the policy wasn’t here,” said Zuzek.
“I would fear in sunsetting this, what signal that would send,” said Director Matt Bruns.
The board discussed rewriting the policy rather than sunsetting it, both in order to make the policy less contentious as well as to include such language in the district’s new strategic plan. In the end, the board decided to move forward sunsetting the policy.
The board will vote to sunset Policy 100 at the March 26 meeting with a first hearing at the Wednesday, Feb. 26 regular meeting.

Legislative priorities
The school board also finalized its legislative priorities for the 2025 legislative session. They are:
1. Further reduce or close the Special Education and Multilingual Learner programs cross-subsidies.
2. Refine the compensatory eligibility identification process.
3. Increase local optional revenue.
4. Fully fund or modify unemployment insurance, paid leave programs, and READ Act mandates.
5. Increase per pupil funding.
6. Allow locally elected school boards to renew existing capital projects, technology referendums at the same level.
7. Increase the per pupil allocation and the allowable use for Long-Term Facilities Maintenance (LTFM), Operating Capital, and Lease Levy programs.
8. Refrain from under-funded mandates and honor local control and inherent managerial rights.
9. Expand access to Voluntary Pre-K.
10. Require data request submissions to require individual/organization identification and allow school districts to recover all costs.
Many of ISD 200’s legislative priorities overlap with those of the MSBA and Minnesota Association of School Administrators (MASA), especially concerning unfunded mandates and increasing the state formula for funding.
The 10th priority concerning data requests was an issue brought to the MSBA delegate assembly by the ISD 200 School Board and taken up by MSBA there.
For more information on the District 200 School Board, visit www.hastings.k12.mn.us/page/school-board