The district is in the middle of its first full year implementing the Leader in Me initiative in the schools with both staff and students, and the effect is already noticeable.

“Students and staff are really getting those action teams off the ground and making some remarkable progress,” said Steph Anderson, director of elementary education.

Leader in Me is a K-12 curriculum that aims to empower students with the leadership and life skills they need to thrive in the 21st century. The model provides a character-building framework based on Franklin Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”

School staff reflect on how they use the seven habits and then model them for students by integrating the social-emotional learning around them into other lessons. Leader in Me aligns to the Iowa Department of Education’s social-emotional learning competencies released in December 2019.

-Messenger file photo by Kelby Wingert
Cooper Elementary School Principal Kate Simpson stands by a bulletin board highlighting the school’s homecoming back to the building.

In early 2020, the FDCS Foundation committed to supporting this program for the first two years at a cost of $55,000 per year for a total investment of $110,000.

“In preschool through 12th grade, we have been implementing the curriculum, implementing the leadership groups within students and within staff throughout each of the buildings,” said Anderson. “There are facilitators and action teams throughout the building so that distributive leadership is happening in every single building in our district.”

The results of the program are clear. In the first eight days of the 2021-2022 school year, the district’s five elementary schools reported 198 behavior referrals. In the first eight days of 2022-2023, there were just 128.

“It was drastically lower this year, when we took the time to build relationships, establish solid expectations and kids were part of that process, so we feel like that was really instrumental in making a change in that effort,” said Anderson.

Currently, the Board of Education is in the process of hiring a new, permanent superintendent. After former Superintendent Derrick Joel departed at the end of the 2021-2022 school year, Dr. Denise Schares was hired as an interim superintendent. Schares is assisting in the search for a new superintendent.

Applications for the position closed Jan. 16 and the district received 14 applications, Schares said.

“That’s a great pool of candidates,” Schares said.

For Cooper Elementary students, the start of this school year was a long-awaited homecoming. While the school underwent substantial renovations, the students and staff were relocated to the former Riverside Elementary building from January through May 2022.

The $4.4 million renovation project included a new HVAC system, ceilings, lighting and flooring. It also widened the doors in the building to make them handicap accessible.

The project was funded with Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds from the federal government.

“We’re just super grateful because it is beautiful and it’s such a different space,” Cooper Principal Kate Simpson said at the start of the school year. “It still feels like Cooper, but it’s just so much more updated and brighter and it feels new even though it’s the same old building.”

With the completion of the renovations, Cooper became the last district building to install an air conditioning system, which means students will no longer enjoy heat-related early releases in the late spring and early fall.

This school year also marked the return of fifth-grade band and orchestra. When the district’s fifth-grade classes were moved from the middle school down to the elementary schools at the start of the 2021-2022 school year, band and orchestra did not follow.

“Laura Klein-Ferry is facilitating individual and small group band lessons with fifth-graders once a week at each of the buildings,” Anderson said. “Brian Robison does the same thing [for orchestra]. Their hope is at the end of the year to potentially bring all the schools together and do some type of performance maybe in April or May.”

Looking ahead for Fort Dodge Schools, the district is looking at its safety initiatives and assessing security vulnerabilities and needs at each building, Anderson said.

“We are hosting a school safety session for parents and families in late February,” she said. “That will be a collaborative effort between the sheriff’s department, the local Police Department and the school district.”