School Board meets with Department of Education for accreditation visit

The Decorah Community School Board met in special session Monday night with three members of an eleven person Department of Education Site Visit Team. The team is in Decorah for Monday and Tuesday visits with multiple groups and individuals within the district.

According to Superintendent Mike Haluska, an interview with the sitting board of education is a routine part of the five-year Department of Education Accreditation Visit.  The meeting was posted as 'open' since the entire board was involved in the process. Some schools districts may elect to have less than full board present for the interview, but the Decorah Community School Board chose to have all members present. Superintendent Haluska was part of a separate interview process.

The primary interviewer for the team, Barbara Beard, from the Iowa Department of Education, posed eleven scripted questions for the board. Board members responded on many issues ranging from vision, student achievement, curriculum, community involvement, and equity issues to their dreams of where they would like the district to be in five years on the next visit.

One theme was prominent in board responses, and that was their investment in their role to provide educational leadership and planning for the district. Board President Melanie Tietz said that they wanted to be a board that "spends less time buying school buses and more time paying attention to instruction." Numerous examples of their efforts of board self education, and the implementation of curriculum planning were cited. The board expressed no major concerns and obstacles other than the uncertainly of educational funding. They did acknowledge that it would be easy to be complacent with their role since Decorah is such a high achieving district in many regards, and is so well supported by the community, but they emphasized that they wanted to keep pushing for improvement. They added that in terms of facilities, they would like the K-2 facilities to be on par with the other district buildings.

The team report will come back to Superintendent Haluska and Board President in about six weeks. It will be considered a public document, except in regard to items that may be regarded confidential such as personnel issues.