FAIRMONT– Kim Niss, principal of curriculum, instruction and research, provided the Fairmont School Board with the World’s Best Workforce Report during the board meeting Tuesday evening.

The five pillars of the World’s Best Workforce are all children are ready for school; all third-graders can read at grade level; all racial and economic achievement gaps between students are closed; all students are ready fo career and college; all students graduate from high school.

“The state of Minnesota has said we have to have goals in all five of these pillars and work together in creating a long-term strategic plan,” Niss said.

She explained that Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) and FASTBridge are the district’s two main assessment tools. She said there’s also a special kindergarten measurement tool.

“Our goal last year for school readiness was that at least 80 percent of kindergarten-eligible students will move up at least one developmental level for all 17 items with the following COR Advantage content area,” Niss said.

Those areas include social and emotional development, math, language, literacy and communication. Tiffany Harris, a STEM teacher at Fairmont Elementary School said last year they used the COR Advantage tool for the first time.

Goal two was that 70 percent of Fairmont Elementary School third grade students will meet their fall and spring year end target on the aReading FASTBridge assessment.

“This particular goal was met last year. Eighty percent of third grade students met their fall to spring growth reading target,” Niss said.

Goal three was to close the achievement gap between non-free and reduced lunch students and the free and reduced lunch students enrolled in grades K through 12 at Fairmont Area Schools.

“Our gap actually grew during this timeframe from 22 percent to 27 percent,” Niss said.

She said they’ve realized that they’re well over the state average when it comes to free and reduced lunch students.

“We have noticed that it’s our BIPOC students who are also free and reduced lunch. We really have a large gap,” Niss said.

She said they set this year’s goal as the proficiency gap between the non-BIPOC students and the BIPOC students enrolled in grades 3 through 10 in reading will decrease from 24.1 percent in 2021 to 21.1 percent in 2022 by increasing the proficiency rates.

For goal number five, college and career readiness, the goal was that by May 2021, achievement of students enrolled in 8th grade algebra prior to Jan. 26. 2021 will increase by 3 percent from 52.7 percent to 55.7 percent on the MCA assessment in math.

“There’s a lot of research that connects college and career readiness to how well a student does in 8th grade algebra,” Niss said.

She said while the goal was not met in 2020-2021, Fairmont was about 5 percent higher than the state average on the 8th grade math test.

Moving to other matters, Superintendent Andy Traetow said there are currently 12 active Covid-19 cases in the district, which is down from previous weeks.

In talking about school activities, Traetow shared that he believes this has been one of the most successful fall sport seasons in school history.

“It’s a testament to the hard work and dedication of our student athletes, our coaches and the talent of our kids. It’s phenomenal and sets the tone for a great start to the school year,” Traetow said.

The board also looked at substitute teacher incentive pay. Traetow said they have continued to see challenges in finding substitute teachers.

“We did some research and gathered some ideas from other school districts,” Traetow said.

He said they have developed a tiered approach where substitute teachers who work one to four days each month will receive $150 per day. Those who work five to nine days a week will receive $165 day. The scale continues to increase and those who work 15 days a month will receive $200 per day.

Traetow said the district will be able to use some supplementary federal funds for this.

“We know we can sustain this and will continue to monitor the necessity to keep this in place,” Traetow said.

In other news, the board:

— Heard about the National FFA Convention from seven members of Fairmont FFA, along with Ag teacher and Fairmont FFA’s co-leader, Katie Elder.

— Accepted a donation of $240 from Fairmont Fire Fighters for first grade field trips.