Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for north central Minnesota.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.org.

Welcome to Lakeland Currents.

I'm Todd Haugen your host for this show.

My guest is Dr. Jeremy Olson, the superintendent of schools in Bemidji School District.

Dr. Olson welcome to Lakeland Currents.

Thank you.

You've been superintendent of schools in Bemidji for roughly a year and a half or so as we record this show.

Midsummer of 22 I believe you started, and your job could be described in a number of ways, boring is certainly not one of them.

You've had kind of a lively time haven't you?

It's been fun.

I tell my kids I do a lot of boring stuff at work, you know, I do a lot of the budget, the planning, the thinking, you know, long range strategy and so forth, but no it's certainly been an interesting and eventful time here in Bemidji area schools.

I'm very much enjoying the area and also getting to know the community.

Jeremy, for those that don't know you yet, what did you do before you came to Bemidji.

So I was a superintendent at Crookston Public Schools for four years and then prior to that I was the superintendent that was shared between Henning Public Schools and Underwood Public Schools, so I've been a superintendent now I believe 16 years.

So it's been an interesting, interesting time, and a good, a very good ride.

What are some of the most challenging things that you've had to deal with since you've come to Bemidji?

I would say, you know, obviously with adjusting to the economy the scale of Bemidji, you know, everything's larger, there's more people, more staff.

I'm a highly relational person so I like to get to know people and that's a little bit more challenging in a larger district.

Just getting to know the relationships, how people are connected, you know, it just takes a little bit longer time to get to know people in the various schools.

So I think that's probably the most challenging thing is just adjusting to the size and complexity of the district.

You know this is a large district.

You know we're about 4,700 students, we serve nine different schools, we have 825 square miles that we transport over.

You know it's a really large and complex district and just getting a handle of that and trying to understand, you know, you can't really develop strategy or long-term planning if you don't understand the district, so trying to come to a terms of understanding the district, knowing what we need to do and then developing strategy to move forward.

Long list of challenges in your position.

For me learning all the names of all the new people, I'm not good at that.

It would take me a long time.

Full disclosure I'm terrible at names, so it takes me longer than most to remember names and to know how people are connected and so forth, so it's a challenge, but I enjoy getting out to the schools and I always just tell people hey, if I call you the wrong name or whatever, just correct me and I'll try to remember for next time.

You mentioned transporting kids.

Has the state's transportation formula for school districts gotten any better?

I know that there were some improvements from the last legislative session.

So the key of the entire issue is that we are paid for by student transported not by miles transported, and when you are in the cities or in large, densely populated areas, you know we have districts that are a fourth to an eighth of the size of Bemidji area schools that transport the same number of students and so therefore their revenue stream is the same as ours, where we have to transport over 825 square miles, 2/3 the size of Rhode Island, and just when you look at that.

We have lots and lots of miles that we're transporting students and that's a mandated service, so we are required to provide this service and yet it costs us a lot more money to travel these miles and to pick up these kids.

So the revenue to the expense ratio is much more difficult for a district like Bemidji, whereas if you have a condensed district or a district in which there's a lot of students per square mile it's a much more cost effective program.

So we lose about a million dollars a year in transportation every single year and that poses a problem for us right, so that contributes to some of the fiscal issues we've had in the past and unfortunately that's going to be a headwind against us as we move into the future.

What we've done is we've been working for several years, Bemidji area schools has been working through a strategy to try to get that formula a little bit better balanced.

The problem with this formula though is obviously when you make a change there's always winners and losers and that gets very difficult politically.

So what we've done is we've tried to work on one part of the formula that does not create winners and losers but only creates an opportunity for those districts that are transporting like we are, where there's lots of miles but fewer kids, and we've been adjusting that and working with the legislature to adjust that and so last year at the last legislative session, we were somewhat successful so that brought in an additional $180,000 for transportation.

Now it doesn't close the gap, in losing about a million dollars a year, but it is a start and we are planning on going back to the legislature again to talk through the unique issues that districts like Bemidji have in transportation and trying to get support and build a coalition around support to get additional revenue because that's really the issue right now.

You know the transporting expenses, those are pretty much fixed, we have to transport, we have to run the miles.

We want to do so efficiently.

We need to make sure that we're meeting parent expectations but the revenue is really what we're attacking and trying to bring that revenue in line with expenses.

Does the school district have to transport kids that go to the charter schools?

Yes, we are required to do that.

One of the things that's, and I'm not blaming anyone, but one of the issues is that when there's a shortfall between revenue and expenses, that shortfall is borne by the public school district, but we are required to transport charter and nonpublic.

We have to offer that as an opportunity for charter and nonpublic schools, and they've been great partners.

I don't want to, you know, certainly don't want to disparage them because they have been great partners.

We actually are communicating on a regular basis.

They've been very helpful when we've had transportation struggles or whatever so they are partners, but the financial impact is borne by the public school, it's not borne by nonpublic or charter schools.

Just another bill that the district has to pay.

Yep.

And as you mentioned earlier, other districts that are smaller geographically actually can bank some extra money from their transportation budgets but not in Bemidji.

So that's one of the issues is let's say our revenues exceeded our expenditures, the district's able to keep those money, those dollars, and use those how they see fit, and that's one of the issues politically is as we talk through this issue with the legislature there are districts that receive or actually make money on transportation every year so they're not wanting to see us change a formula because when you're making money, you know, you want to keep those revenue streams.

So it is an issue that we are working on in partnership with other districts to try to make it a more balanced or more fair formula for the entire state.

That's one of the things that Bemdiji School District has to work on, you know, when the district says to its area residents and property owners, you know, we're in a tight spot and that's one of the reasons, because of transportation.

Well, absolutely.

So right now, as we looked we've come a long ways in our budget.

I've been really proud of our team and the work that they've been doing to close that gap but right now we're projected to be about a $1.6 million shortfall as an overall budget.

The issue is that we are between a 1 and a $1.5 million shortfall in transportation.

So when you look at that, we're pretty dang close to balance if we had transportation fully funded.

So it's not that we are, you know, I hear people talk about fiscal responsibility and accountability and I want to make sure that people understand that, you know, this is a major issue, it's a required service but because it's a required service there's an expense there and that expense is about $1 to $1.5 million projected for this year which corresponds pretty tightly with our $1.6 million total projected shortfall.

What will we do about that 1.6 million, we'll know more in the spring?

Yeah, well right now we have Covid funds that are one-time dollars that we are basically able to use to close that but when we talk about where we are structurally post-covid dollars and this is where we've been trying to be very disciplined and work on this very diligently because post-covid or post-covid dollars running out in 2024 here, we are going to be in a situation in which we are going to have real large shortfalls and so we've been working very diligently trying to close that gap with the goal of closing the gap prior to those funds being removed.

And so what we're doing at this point is working very diligently to try to close that gap because we don't want to see a depletion in fund balance because at some point you will run out of fund balance and so part of being fiscally responsible is really looking and taking a hard look at all areas, including transportation.

Where does Bemidji School District or any public school district for that matter get its money?

Primarily from the state, that's the largest piece.

So we have state aid that comes, so we've got two categories, aid and levy.

So levy dollars are dollars that are coming from property owners and then aid is coming directly from the state.

Most of our budget is made up from state aid, then we have local property taxes and then we have a small amount of federal funds that we also receive for programs, you know, such as our Title One program which is helping kids in reading and math and so forth.

So the primary answer is state aid.

So a school district doesn't have a lot of options to turn to if it has a shortfall.

No.

We can't raise our prices right?

Just don't have that option.

No don't have that option.

Employment has been an issue, Covid, you know, just messed up everything, but since then it seems like it's harder to find employees, am I right?

You are right.

I'm hoping that that pendulum is starting to swing backwards.

We have had an issue recruiting certain areas.

We've been very fortunate to recruit high quality teachers, although the number of teachers that are in those banks of applications are much lower than we've had in the past.

Our major issue, you know, paraprofessionals are very difficult to bring in.

We have a shortage of bus drivers as we've talked about in transportation.

That's a large issue for us to recruit more bus drivers and so I would say transportation and special education paraprofessionals are the most difficult to recruit at this point.

Speaking of bus drivers, that's been a chronic shortage of bus drivers.

The district is still short about how many do you think you're short?

So right now, and we're actually working through various different options, I think we're going to make some progress here in the next couple months but right now we're about four short, so when we start our day and we are behind on four routes that means we have to use four subs to fill those routes just to be even every day.

That of course depletes your sub routes or your sub drivers, which has an impact on if you have drivers calling in sick and so forth.

So it's kind of a ripple effect.

We are in a lot better situation than we were last spring.

You know as we projected into the year we've made a lot of progress, but I could probably hire four to five bus drivers right now and that would put us in a much better position.

Among the school district's bus driver subs is one Jeremy Olson right?

Have you been doing some bus driving?

When they scrape the bottom of the barrel yep.

But I mean that's just amazing to me the superintendent is sometimes out driving a bus.

But I want to let you know that we have a lot of transportation managers that are also driving the bus as well almost on a daily basis.

So we have our transportation director has a daily route that he's driving.

It's all hands on deck, right, so and when all hands are on deck that means the superintendent needs to step up, too.

So our entire transportation and I want to just do a quick shout out for our transportation department.

Our transportation managers, who on a daily basis are driving buses.

And there are also bus monitors that ride on the bus.

And you looked like the district is looking for some of those as well.

Yeah, we are always in, you know in our special education buses we have paraprofessionals that will ride the bus to help, you know, with the unique needs of students, help manage, you know, behaviors and so forth.

So yeah we're always looking for people that are good with kids and have that passion for education.

So plenty to do as the superintendent of schools in the Bemidji School District.

Yep, I'm fortunate to have a great staff.

Jeremy, also want to talk about Central School for a moment.

Every once in a while the question comes up.

Central School is an elementary school in Bemidji that closed some time ago.

You know always sad to see a school close but that happened before your time here.

What's the status of that building?

So right now we are in the process of, you know it's for sale, we're in the process right now of working with a buyer.

We're working diligently through that process and we're working through, you know, what would a purchase agreement look like and we're working through some of those legal aspects of that.

So there's some more steps to to be done, but that'll all be coming to, you know, to a board meeting at some point.

So we do think we have an interested buyer, we do think that we have some mutually advantageous terms to that agreement and so we're just working through the process and you know as part of the process we needed to make sure that, you know, last I think it was, was it September or October, I can't remember which board meeting we went through a legal process to basically say okay this property now is ready to go for sale and so now that that's in place, now we can move forward with a purchase agreement.

Well we'll look forward to hearing more about that soon.

Also, mental health.

At one of the last board meetings there was what I thought was a compelling report by one of the student representatives about wanting more counselors or psychologists or social workers within the Bemidji area schools, specifically in this case the high school, but those cost money and we were just talking about a $1.6 million shortfall.

It would be nice if you could have more wouldn't it?

Yes.

You know it's one of those things where if I could bring in, you know, five to six more school counselors to work with our kids I would do that in a heartbeat, but the issue is, what the reality of that is that for every counselor you bring in you have to remove a teacher and that's not, you know, that's not the way that we want to go about business.

Our strategy right now is to, up until we can balance our budget, is to hold on to the supports we have in place for students.

So we've upped the supports as a district in our mental health arena quite a bit using one-time Covid funds.

Now what we're doing is we're trying to work towards, we know that you know the easy thing would be to take them back and to save that money, but we also know the impact, the direct impact that they have on students and know that we can't go ahead and just remove these very important practitioners and so what our strategy is is saying okay, this is the support we have, we know that it's very impactful to students, we know that they're doing some great work in schools to support our students through some difficult times through some of the challenges that students are going through these days to work towards a direction which we're holding on to what we have, and then balancing the budget with what we have currently, which is, again, several steps ahead of where we were, you know, three to four years ago.

There might be some people watching this edition of Lakeland Current saying, gee, you know, there weren't psychologists or counselors or social workers in school when I was going to school, but I guess I would maintain that I think when I was going to school even though those weren't there, there would have been some kids and maybe even this kid that could have used it a time or two, it is a valuable thing to to be able to offer kids.

I think one of the biggest pieces that they offer is it's, and we want every student in our schools to have a a strong relationship with one of our with one adult, a caring adult within the school, there's a lot of research that talks about when students have a strong relationship with a caring adult in schools that their outcomes are much better, and with our counselors, with our mental health practitioners, with the people that are working with our kids, when they're able to develop some strong relationships that sometimes other staff aren't able to do for various different reasons, and so that's a really important and impactful element there too is building those relationships, helping students through very difficult times, and then we also, when we talk about school counselors, these are people that are highly, you know, general in nature, they're helping students, guiding them towards, you know, what are they going to do in the future, helping them with issues that maybe they're experiencing in school, giving them, you know, wise counsel.

So these people that we have in our schools, our counselors, are providing these very large, when you look at the scope of their work, a very broad scope of services to our students.

So they're very important.

As usual our Lakeland Current show is going much too quickly.

I want to talk just for a few minutes about some of the really cool things about Bemidji School District.

We have two kids, two daughters, one of whom has finished her time at Bemidji schools having graduated in '22, and we have a student at the high school, our other daughter.

I mean there has been teacher after teacher and class after class that are just outstanding, so I wish I could mention every single one of them, but we don't have time for that.

What I wanted to be sure to mention was Bemidji Career Academies at the high school, which is a concept that I just think is so cool, that is being, you know, done in education today that people might not know about, might not understand.

What is Bemidji Career Academies?

Yeah so let's take a quick step back, you know, even 20 years ago where we were as a public school system.

We tended to have a very wrong view on what success looked like after high school.So we, in K12, we tended to push people towards four-year degrees, that you need a four-year degree to be successful, and I'm not against four-year degrees, I have a four-year degree.

I think that's a great option for many students, but we also know today that four-year degrees are not always the right option for all students, right.

We need electricians, we need people that have a lot of technical skills, we need people that are in multiple careers, we need bus drivers, we need people to be in our service industry, we need people to be in our production industries and so forth.

So we need to produce, as students in our country, a broad range of skills and when we have everything narrowly focused on four-year degrees sometimes what we're doing is we're taking kids and putting them in areas or pushing them to areas that are not their right fit.

They're not, it's not their passion area.

And so what we've been doing, and there's been a trend and a switch towards instead of saying you just need to go to get a four-year degree to be successful, we're saying we need to match your skills, your aptitudes, and what your desires are for your life and we need to help guide you towards whatever that path is.

If it's the military, if it's careers, if it's technical college, if it's a two-year vocational or if it's a four-year, those are all good and honorable paths for students and we want students to have skills after high school.

One of the reasons that I believe public education exists is, well there's two reasons I believe.

I think one is to develop a good citizen.

I think secondly is for economic development and to give our next generation the skills that they need to be successful after high school.

So what we're looking at holistically as a district is what does it take to be successful after high school and then how do we match the skills and dispositions our students have with what we would consider successful after high school.

So part of that is we certainly want people that want to go into a four-year career path to do that, to go to and it's a great option.

What Career Academies does is it says we're going to allow you to explore several different careers.

So, for instance, we had a student that just got their pilots license.

You know that's just one element.

We have students that want to be teachers and so we're trying to put them into experiences where they're working with students to see hey is this the right career path for you.

And so my daughter actually would like to be a teacher.

She already has kind of decided that.

Of course as a parent I'm super proud of her and I think that's wonderful, but we want to give her experiences so she can understand is this the right career path.

I think the wrong time to learn whether or not going you're going to be a teacher is in your student teaching because that's the very end, after you went through four years of college, to learn that maybe this isn't the right path for you.

We want to have students experience that far earlier and we want to have them experience that in high school so they can make that decision.

Okay, well, sometimes people will explore a path and say this is not right for me.

Right.

Well we want them to find that out in high school versus in college, right, so we want to, when people are going into college or going into two-year or going into post-secondary experiences or vocational experiences, we want them to already be able to focus down and say okay this is the area I'm passionate about, not sure exactly where I'm going to be, but this is at least the direction I need to take.

And so what Career Academies really is doing is it's trying to give direction to students.

You know they can explore law enforcement, they can explore, you know, being a teacher, they can explore various different career paths that are available to them and some of them are saying hey, I found my passion, my area that I want to go down and then others are hey, I've explored this path, it's not for me, I'm going to go somewhere else.

And so really what this is about is it's about exploring the different opportunities available to students and trying to give them those skills, dispositions, aptitudes, before they get out into the real world per se.

Bemidji Career Academies offers a career fair early in the school year correct, and then some, I think I heard Jenny say there's going to be a job fair this coming spring again?

And that's what I think is so unique about Bemidji is just how many opportunities our students have, not only in the high school course offerings that we offer, I mean just we have tons and tons of classes, but also that we have the Career Academies that connects with basically trying to connect kids to their passion, right, so they're able to explore multiple different opportunities and then giving them, like you're saying, career fairs, hiring fairs, and so forth, putting them in touch with, you know, we're constantly looking at how can we do internships you know in various different areas, working with our partners to say hey can you develop an internship for our students that maybe have an interest in this area and that just gives those kids those real life experiences and then also having the career fairs and hiring fairs just gives kids more and more options because some people are connecting and saying hey I actually got a job out of this or maybe I'm able to, you know, check out a couple careers that I didn't even know existed.

Because that's the other element that we have in public schools is we have to prepare students for careers that may not exist yet and so that's where we want to teach, you know, flexibility, cooperation, collaboration, how to work as a team and those are all skills that we try to impart into our students as well.

But that only works because you have all these community partners that offer kids the opportunity to come visit their careers but also these local foundations, six of them I believe right, that are generous, that make donations toward the program that help make it work.

Yes, we have incredible community partnerships that certainly support.

I went through a pretty long list of donations of people that are stepping up and saying we see value in career academies, we see value in what it's doing for our students.

We also see value pragmatically and saying we're starting to get employees out of this.

So when I think about some of our partnerships with, you know, Sanford Health, for instance, and starting, you know, with the CNA program and how that's starting to help them with their workforce shortages but also providing opportunities for our students to either explore healthcare, get jobs in healthcare.

Sometimes students are exploring that and they realize you know I'm going to go and further my education in this area because I am so passionate about it, so lots of options available to our students.

Jeremy we only have a few seconds left really, but I just wanted to give you a chance to mention the school district's Pre-K program.

Preschool and Pre-K and ECFE.

I just want to be sure people know that's available to young parents.

That is a bright spot in our district, one of many bright spots, but our preschool program we are looking at trying to over time expand that because we know that preschool education is so important for our students, making sure that kids have the skills to be kindergarten ready, and then also to be, and we talked about life ready right.

Starting in preschool how do we get kids ready so that they are able to have success in kindergarten, because we know that when kids are successful in kindergarten that helps them in elementary school.

When they're successful in elementary and just that ripple effect and so I am very proud of our preschool program.

We're developing those skills especially as we start to take a real focus on reading instruction and what that looks like and how do we best prepare our students so that they are ready to learn to read and then that reading process as they get into, you know, kindergarten and so forth.

Find out more about it on the Bemidji School District website.

Absolutely.

All right.

Dr. Jeremy Olson we certainly appreciate your time today, for coming in to visit on Lakeland Currents and hopefully we'll have another chance to chat again real soon.

Sounds good, thank you.

That's this edition of Lakeland Currents.

I'm Todd Haugen.

Thanks for watching.