District 88 panel won't be hiring diversity coordinator

By CHANCE PRIGGE

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- New Ulm members of the Cottonwood River Integration Coordinating Committee have decided not to hire a district diversity coordinator.

District 88 Superintendent Harold Remme told District 88 School about the decision at its meeting Thursday night.

The decision came after members had started interviewing candidates for the position.

"Through the interview process, we determined a better use of those finances would be to spend it on several people than one diversity coordinator," Superintendent Harold Remme said.

The funding set aside for the coordinator, about $20,000, must be spent on people or projects in the CRIC.

Ann Hartberg has already been hired as the diversity coordinator for all five school districts involved in the program.

Instead of hiring one coordinator for District 88, Remme said, the committee could look at hiring people temporarily for different projects in the CRIC.

"The candidates were fine," Remme said. "We wanted to move in a different direction."

The committee had decided last year to hire a District 88 diversity coordinator.

In other District 88 business, the School Board heard Thursday night from Healthy Communities/Healthy Youth Director Susan Ward, who presented a five-year report on what the organization has accomplished.

Its mission, said Ward, is to promote wellness and healthy lifestyles by working to strengthen the asset-building capacity of families and communities to ensure youth are valued.

Ward talked about funding for the organization. She said 80 to 85 percent of the organization's funding has come from local donations, which helps when state funding drops, as it has recently.

In 1997, the organization reported funding of $20,535. Last year that number more than tripled to $70,400.

Ward also brought in some Minnesota Student Survey statistics results from 1998 and 2001, in which New Ulm students from grades six, nine and 12 were surveyed.

The results were prepared by the Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning.

One survey said 74 percent ninth-grade students in 2001 had smoked zero cigarettes in the last 30 days, which is up from 62 percent in '98. Eight percent of students, meanwhile, smoked one-and-a-half to two packs in the last 30 days in 2001, which is the same number from '98.

A survey also said the percent of ninth-grade students who have had a drink with alcohol in it has raised from 40 percent to 50 percent for zero times. It did increase from 3 percent of students to 7 percent for those saying they've had 40 or more drinks with alcohol in the last 12 months.

"That's the student body reporting that about themselves," Ward said.

In other business, the board certified the candidates for the Board of Education elections in November. All six candidates met the four requirements: he or she must be eligible to vote in Minnesota; he or she is or will be, on assuming office, at least 21 years old; he or she will have been a resident of the election district for 30 days before the election; and he or she is not registered as a convicted sex offender.

The next School Board meeting will at at 5 p.m., not 7 p.m. as usual, on Sept. 26.