Online edition
Your Hometown News since 1897
Chokio, MN 56221
Aug. 23rd
2012 issue
Chokio Review • P.O. Box 96 Chokio, MN 56221 • Site Map
City of Morris, MN
Chokio-Alberta gets ready for the upcoming school year
by Nick Ripperger
Summer is winding down and school will soon begin, so not surprisingly the Chokio-Alberta’s school board meeting meeting Monday evening focused mostly on the upcoming school year.
Mark Ekren, the Morris Area Activities Director, attended the meeting to update the board on a couple of matters of mutual interest and to ask whether C-A wanted to pair with Morris-Area in boys’ swimming this year.
Ekren admitted there were some glitches last year in notifying the C-A district and athletes when there were practice changes, resulting in C-A students travelling to Morris to discover that a scheduled practice had been cancelled.
He told the board that Morris Area now has in place a system that will notify parents of any changes in schedules, including postponements and cancellations, shortly after those decisions are made.
Parents, students, and anyone else interested in keeping current on the sports schedules, can now go to the West Central Conference’s website, find the Morris Area page, and sign up for notifications. Once signed up, that person will receive both phone and email messages informing them of the change. Other information relating to the sports teams can be found there, as well.
In another sports-related matter, Ekren asked the board whether C-A wanted to officially pair with Morris Area in boys’ swimming this year. C-A already is paired with Morris-Area in almost all sports, but hasn’t made a formal commitment in either boys’ or girls’ swimming. Ekren said that it is too late for girls’ swimming this year, but the board still has another month or so to decide on boys’ swimming.
Ekren, as well as the C-A board members and superintendent Dave Baukol, agreed that the pairing arrangements have worked well for both schools, with the pairing giving C-A students more sports to participate in, and C-A students in turn making significant contributions to many of the teams.
There were only 13 students who participated in boys’ swimming last year, including a couple of junior high students from C-A, and Ekren said that he would like to see those numbers increase.
The board agreed that they want to give the opportunity to any C-A student to participate in any sport he or she chooses to, but delayed making a decision on the swimming pairing until next month’s meeting to see if any students express the desire to participate.
Last year, the C-A district paid Morris Area just over $24,000 for the cost of its participants. Overall, there were 73 C-A participants in 14 sports, with softball, volleyball, and football having the highest numbers, with about a dozen in each.
Pool to stay open longer
Members of the SPLASH committee, which has raised money over the past couple of years to upgrade the C-A pool and to help keep it open, asked the board to consider keeping the pool open beyond a scheduled October 1 closing date for the winter.
Jenny Lee and Sandi Marlow-Weber told the board that the pool’s summer swimming lessons had brought in about 160 kids from Chokio, Alberta, and surrounding communities. Counting all income and expenses, they said that the pool generated about $11,600 in income and about $12,600 in expenses during the spring and summer.
They also recounted that SPLASH had replaced the skylights in the pool room and was working on replacing the diving board at the pool
Board members Brian Sletten and Mark Gibson praised SPLASH for rejuvenating the pool, and the board as a whole decided to keep the pool open through October 28.
Other business
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•Last month the board developed a sliding scale for athletic participation fees based on whether students qualified for free or reduced-cost lunches. Monday evening they applied that scale to kindergarten fees.
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The regular fee for Monday and Friday kindergarten is $120. The fee for students who qualify for reduced-price lunches will be $100, and for those who qualify for free lunches, the fee will be $70. The fees for kindergartners who attend just on Monday or Friday will be half of those.
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•Only two C-A district residents filed for the three positions on the school board that will be up for election this November, Robyn Marty and Christina Pederson. Incumbents Kurt Staples, Kirby Johnson, and Jake Marty did not file for reelection. Board members encouraged anyone serious about conducting a write-in campaign to announce their intention.
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•Gibson and Sletten gave a brief summary of the closed meeting the board had with superintendent Baukol regarding his annual performance review.
They described the interaction as straightforward and frank. They said that the board agreed that Baukol had done a good job during his first year and talked to him about the district’s future goals.
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Thirsty Birds
The drought is not only affecting crops across the midwest, but also the smallest of birds. The tiny hummingbird flies about 2,000 miles during migration. With a heart rate of up to 1,200 beats per minute, they often need to eat five times their body weight every day. This year's migration is complicated by the lack of natural wildflowers, which have been hit hard by drought and forest fires. So the little birds, like this male ruby throated hummingbird, are in search of food and water along the way. Remember to be kind to your fine feathered friends – and give them a sip of water (a little sugar would be appreciated too). Photo by Shirley Weeding
