The Flandreau Board of Education held a short business meeting on Monday, Feb. 10 before holding executive session to discuss the superintendent search and ensuing interviews.
Current Flandreau School District Superintendent Rick Weber is retiring June 30, the end of the current fiscal year. In November 2024, the district hired the firm of Dakota Education Consulting to aid in the search for his replacement.
DEC advertised, and sought out what they felt could be proper applicants, for the position with a January 30 closing. Since then, they have been going through those applications and narrowed the number down to three individuals a number recommended by the school board – they saw as a good fit for the district, according to Tom Oster of DEC. This past Monday morning, the school board held a special session to interview those three applicants.
The successful candidate will be announced shortly after those interviews are completed and the applicant has accepted the position.
On Tuesday morning, it was announced that Quinton Cermak of Highmore-Harrold Schools was hired and accepted the position. We’ll have more on this in next week’s paper.
Supt. Weber also gave the board a plethora of good news from various programs throughout the school, namely the State One-Act play cast for their Superior award and Outstanding Performer and Ensemble awards, Esports going to the first state sanctioned event and several events the choral department has performed at or will be performing.
He reminded board members that the Early Learner Screening will be held March 4 and 5.
Kindergarten students will be screened on March 4th and Child Find will be held on March 5th at the Community Center.
As such, no kindergarten classes will be held on Tuesday, March 4 as the teachers will be screening 2025-26 eligible kindergarteners and junior kindergarteners that day.
A brief discussion was held on class sizes for the next school year. The information given was for budgeting reasons only. This school year has a large number of kindergarten students (64) plus 16 junior kindergarteners.
The screenings in early March will give us a better idea of numbers for next year, said Weber.
In other items at the meeting, the board approved the resignation of long-time teacher and coach Owen Parsley as social studies teacher and head track coach, and Jill Fedders-Ellefson from her FFA advisory position at the end of the school year.
They approved the hiring of Hannah Groth as the Ag Education instructor and FFA advisor beginning in the fall, Robert Lack as middle school track coach, Liam Streitz, assistant track coach and Kyrie Dunkley as a paraprofessional.
School Resource Officer Gabe Frias gave a report on his work to the board most notably that chronic absences are down this year as they work to get and keep students in the classroom.
Frias also started a Drug Free World program for 7th and 8th graders showing them the effects of drugs. These include videos from real experiences on what could happen to them due to illicit drug use. He also is doing an Empower program with 5th and 6th graders which is much similar to the DARE program used in preview years.
This program helps in empowering them to make the right choice, said Frias.
School board petitions are due on Friday, February 28 for the 3-year terms of Kari Burggraff and Dustin Headrick, and a 2-year term for Brian Johnson.
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