By Carleen Wild,
Moody County Enterprise
Parents with Pleasant Valley Colony, part of the Flandreau Public School District, are asking for additional support for their small K-8 school, saying current staffing levels are making it difficult to fully meet the needs of students.
About a dozen colony residents, including parents and school leadership, spoke before the Flandreau School Board during public comment at its regularly scheduled meeting earlier this month, asking the district to consider adding a third teacher for the nearly two dozen students attending the colony school on the eastern edge of Moody County.
Currently, the district provides two teachers for the students.
“We feel we don’t have enough staff to do what we need to do,” Zach Tschetter told the board.
Tschetter, president of the Pleasant Valley Colony board, said parents have growing concerns about student achievement and provided recent testing information to school board members as part of the request.
“They are the greatest asset that we have, it’s our chief responsibility because they are our future, we have to depend on them, and we have to give them the best that we have to give and we have a very short time to do that. So we do whatever we can as parents to provide for them the best that we can and we have trusted the Flandreau School District for a few decades now to support and supply education, economic hope, and we hope we can continue that in the future.”
District officials have already been meeting with colony leadership in recent months to discuss concerns and look at ways to best support student success.
Because the matter was raised during public comment and was not listed as an action item on the agenda, the board did not formally discuss the request that evening.
Board members thanked the group for bringing their concerns forward, with conversations expected to continue.
More on the story — including a closer look at the colony school and the conversations surrounding student support — in an upcoming edition.
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