Columbia Heights School District — Transcript

Tuesday, August 12, 2025

Board Member Reports

Superintendent's Report

Upcoming School Year Events

Votes (2)

Acknowledgement of Contributions

5-0 Approved (Roll Call Vote: Maderas I, Pway I, Palmer I, Brandley I, Smith I)

Dissent: None

Moved by Michelle [2:57] · Seconded by Jessica [3:00]

The school board resolved to accept $2,985 in monetary contributions from various individuals and an anonymous donor. These donations were directed to the Staff Scholarship Fund for Dean Miley Memorial, the Retired Staff Scholarship Fund in memory of Ralph Ky, and the Columbia Heights School District general fund. The total fiscal year 2024-2025 monetary contributions to date were reported as $192,381.13.

Youth Outreach Officer Agreement and Data Presentation

Information presented; Agreement to be presented for approval at the August 26th meeting.

Dissent: No dissent was voiced; discussion focused on clarification and feedback.

Moved by null · Seconded by null

Director Henkkins and Chief Markham presented data on youth outreach officer (YOO) activity and incident statistics for Columbia Heights schools, covering the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years. The data notably showed zero use of force incidents by the YOO in the last school year and overall low incident numbers. Board members sought clarification on data interpretation, particularly the terms 'offender' and 'offense' in police reports, and discussed the transition from two School Resource Officers (SROs) to one YOO based at the Highlander Center. The revised YOO agreement, developed collaboratively and updated to comply with new state statutes and postboard policy, was presented for future approval, emphasizing its custom nature to reflect the district's community policing model.

Notable Quotes (6)

I think just the perpetual Thank you very much to our community. We really appreciate it. and um it's wonderful to see all of the scholarship funds that um come in and that our students get to receive as they graduate.

Granland [3:03]
Acknowledgement of Contributions

The most notable thing on here is the very bottom one. There were no use of force incidents by the youth outreach officer last school year. I don't remember a school year where we had no use of force used at all. So I think when we're going through this I'll just take questions instead of just reading it to you.

Chief Markham [12:38]
Youth Outreach Officer Agreement and Data Presentation

I think feedback that I'm sort of picking up in general from some of these questions is that um it may be better for uh for the school board and for the general public if we understood these things differently as in like offenses or and also maybe points of contact because otherwise as you said it looks like we have arrested an 11year-old for something.

Granland [29:14]
Youth Outreach Officer Agreement and Data Presentation

What we've ended up with here, I feel like, is representative of what we're doing. And although it's certainly in compliance with the postboard model policy and with statute, it is not a copy and paste from either of those sources, it really is representative of how we do things here in um our school district and and with the city of Columbia Heights.

Jessica [36:04]
Youth Outreach Officer Agreement and Data Presentation

I think it's incredibly um it's uplifting to hear that this this is still working really well um and that our schools continue to be safer because of our um community policing model that you have and our the close ties that our school district has with our um with our city.

Granland [40:47]
Youth Outreach Officer Agreement and Data Presentation

So, just like the um police department has added social workers on their force, we've also greatly increased our social workers and our school psychologists and our staff um like our admin team is trained in um in deescalation and um we do a lot with you know like restorative practices um and um I think too just the principles really strive to create a climate in and they're in a culture in their schools that's a safe culture.

Superintendent Stenvik [49:09]
Youth Outreach Officer Agreement and Data Presentation

Ordinances & Resolutions (4)

Minnesota State Statute 123B.02Statute

Permits school boards to receive and apply bequests, donations, or gifts for district benefit and to act as trustee for trusts.

Postboard policy for school resource officersPolicy

State-mandated policy which informed the revisions to the Youth Outreach Officer agreement.

LexipolOther

Policy software and company utilized by the police department to publish and edit policies.

Tyler systemsOther

New county-wide records management system being adopted by the joint law enforcement council, expected to improve data pulling capabilities.

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Columbia Heights School District - Columbia Heights Recorder