FAIRMONT – The Fairmont School Board heard the yearly report on Comprehensive Achievement and Civic Readiness at its meeting on Tuesday.

The report is required by Minnesota Statute 120B.11, which states a school board, at a public meeting, must adopt a comprehensive, long-term strategy to support and improve teaching and learning in a way aligned with creating the World’s Best Workforce.

This year is the first under its new name of Comprehensive Achievement and Civic Readiness, as it had been called the World’s Best Workforce report in prior years.

Principal of Curriculum, Instruction and Research Kim Niss presented the results, which consisted of several goals from the previous year and the results they had achieved.

The overall district goal is to increase the total number of students reading at their grade level or above from 52.5 percent to 62.5 percent by May 2027, as measured by the FastBridge aReading assessment. Niss said that goal is currently being monitored and will be reported on when the time comes for results.

The first goal is their All Students Ready for School goal. In the fall of 2024, the percentage of kindergarten students in the low-risk and advanced categories from the FAST aReading standardized assessment was 31.8 percent. The goal was to increase it to 50 percent by spring 2025. While they did not achieve this goal, they did get an increase to 40.7 percent of students in the low-risk and advanced categories.

“We did increase by 8.9 percent but again, the goal was not met because we didn’t quite make that 18.2 percent jump,” Niss said. “That is goal number one. We’re continuing that goal for this school year as well.”

The second goal was for Closing the Academic Achievement Gap. The objective was to raise the percentage of students in grades K-6 in the low-risk and above average category for the FAST aReading standardized assessment from 50.7 percent last year to 54.2 percent in spring 2025.

This goal was not met, and the percentage actually decreased to 47.1 percent of students in these categories. The current stated goal for the 2025-2026 school year is to decrease the percentage of students meeting flat growth (meaning their reading skills are not increasing) by 5 percent from May 2025 to May 2026 as measured by the FastBridge aReading assessment.

Niss said that they are diving into the results and still fine-tuning what they want to do for next year’s goals.

“The goal that you see written here, we are adjusting that as we dig into the data a little bit further,” she said. “We are going to adjust that goal. The final report is not due until December 15 so the goals for this current year, we are still tweaking those a little bit.”

For the College and Career Preparedness goal, it is more long-term, as they seek an increase in 8th-grade students proficient on their state math assessments from 18.1 percent in 2023 to 26.1 percent in 2027. They were on track in 2024 with 24.6 percent of students being proficient, but in 2025 that number dropped to 7.4 percent.

Niss said this number is an outlier for the district and takes them off track for meeting this goal.

“I took time and really tracked this particular grade over their years to find out, ‘Was this truly a one-time outlier of a number for them?'” She said. “There were some trends with this grade heading in this direction over the last couple of years. We’re really looking into this one as well.”

In looking over the results, Niss said it sparked good discussion on how to best write goals with students’ base academic skills in mind to truly track their progress as the goal progresses.

Fairmont did meet their All Students Graduate goal, which sought for at least 90 percent of their freshman students to earn 12 or more credits during the school year. With 125 of 137 doing so, they hit 91.2 percent.

“We follow that then through to as they graduate to look at their graduation rate and the correlation between [that and] their number of credits as ninth graders,” Niss said.

The final individual goal is Lifelong Learning. Niss said this goal is underway, as they collected baseline data for students’ daily desired experiences.

Scores range from 1 to 5 depending on what percentage of students have most or all of their daily desired experiences met. A 1 would be the lowest score, indicating that less than 60 percent of students have had their expectations for school met. A 5 or above would be the highest score, with 75 percent or more students having their expectations met.

With that system now established, Niss said they want to see an increase in total scores of at least 0.5 by June 2026.

Board Member Nicole Green asked Niss if FastBridge was accurately describing how their students are doing, or if there is a better option.

Niss said they have learned it is a good screener of students, but they are looking at other options. Since they must use Capti’s ReadBasix assessment this year to comply with the READ Act, Niss said they will compare Capti and FastBridge to determine if a full shift is necessary.

In other news:

— Superintendent Traetow commented on the referendum results. He said in his report that the results are not what they hoped for, but they respect the community’s decision. “Moving forward, we’re going to continue to be committed to upholding our mission of being a leading and innovative school district and preparing our kids to thrive today and excel tomorrow,” Traetow said. “While doing that, we recognize the result is maybe a setback with some of the goals we had, but we’ll continue to work diligently to engage our communities and build a bright future for our school district, the Fairmont area and most importantly, our youth and our students.”

— Fairmont High School was recognized on national television, as it was chosen to represent the state of Minnesota on the 2025 ESPN Honor Roll. The honor roll is comprised of one National Banner School per state, and Fairmont recently received that banner for its work on the Unified Cardinals program and inclusion of students with disabilities as a whole.