Dr. Schatz Gives Fargo Public Schools its Own Report Card

Fargo Public Schools are giving themselves a report card.
 
District leaders personally met with staff, parents and community members to help better meet the needs of students.
 
Hundreds gathered at Discovery Middle School to hear from Superintendent Dr. Jeff Schatz.

He told us about the districts strengths and some areas that need improvement.
 
Dr. Schatz says the district takes pride in having a wide variety of classes which get the help of many businesses around town.

He says their AP placement is much higher than that of West Fargo, Grand Forks and Bismarck.
 
“We provide a very robust curriculum,” said Dr. Schatz. “We provide many different opportunities for students to engage in rigorous curriculum to help prepare them.”
 
But now one of the biggest issues the district faces is budget cuts.
 
“We know that the revenues in the state are hurting right now and also some of the revenue sources that we have from our local property taxes too are frozen,” he explained.
 
In the 2015-16 school year, 28.6 percent of the budget came from the state: that’s over $44 million.

He says they’re continuing to keep an eye on state revenue and find the best ways to use what they have.

They’re also dealing with a large amount of students going in and out of the district which Dr. Schatz says causes problems with consistent learning.
 
“When 10 percent of your student population is coming and going all throughout the entire school year, that provides some challenges for classroom teachers and challenges for families,” Dr. Schatz said.
 
Despite this, officials expect district-wide enrollment to go up by almost 800 students by the year 2021.

With the growing population comes a change in social problems which Schatz says is affecting their classrooms.
 
“When we have community concerns about drug abuse, mental health, homelessness, those are all things we deal with,” he said. “So we try to do the best we can to help them.”
 
After the talk, everyone broke into focus groups where faculty met face to face with the community to hear their wants and needs for the schools.
 
They hope to open a new Operations Center sometime in 2017 to improve school meals and other resources used by the district.