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School is starting

The start of a new school year is a time that is often filled with nervousness, anticipation, and a sense of newness for many of our students, families, and staff members. I am personally excited to welcome students back into our buildings and get the year off to what I fully anticipate will be a great start. I thought I would share a few important updates as we transition out of summer and into the school year.

School officially start on Sept. 3 for many of our students. Some of our schools have what we call“assessment days” the first few days of school, so not all of our students will be in school that day; however, all of our students will start not later than Monday, Sept. 9. We anticipate having over 2,500 students enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade when school starts.

We will have nearly 30 new staff members (at least new to MPS) in our district this year, with nearly half of them being teachers or licensed staff members. Both West Side Elementary and Marshall Area Technical Education Center will have new leadership with Eric Hjelden (West Side) and Amanda Pederson (MATEC) assuming the role as site administrator/principal at those sites. I’ve had the opportunity to meet many of our new staff members and am impressed with them as they become important members of our staff. Our community is such a great place to live and work, and I’m looking forward to helping welcome them all to MPS and Marshall.

Work on improving safety and security at West Side and the Marshall Middle School has been happening much of the past two months, and quite a bit of the work will be “done” when students return to school this coming week. In addition to safety and security work taking place in/on our facilities, we are also looking internally at our procedures to ensure that we are working from the inside-out to keep students, staff, and visitors safe in our schools.

There has also been a great deal of discussion, brainstorming, and planning taking place over the summer as we get ready to roll out final schematic plans for the new elementary school (grades 2-4),early childhood space/program expansion at Park Side, and safety and security facility projects at Park Side, Marshall High School, and MATEC. I anticipate “final” plans will be approved and available in mid-

September, at which time we look forward to sharing the plans to keep our community informed about what’s happening with our facilities since the May 2019 referendum was approved by district residents.

We are planning to have all of the facility work completed for the start of the 2021-2022 school year.

As schools starts, there will be much more activity around our five school sites in Marshall. Students who have been on summer break for the last three months will return to school and — in some cases — may not be paying as much attention to traffic as we might like them to. When we are traveling around schools, please pay special attention to students walking, biking, and/or running to or from school, especially between 7:30-8 a.m. and from 3-3:30 p.m. We can all play a part in keeping our children/students safe when they are traveling to or from school.

I can be reached at scott.monson@marshall.k12.mn.us or at 507-537-6924. Thank you for taking time to read this and for the support shown for the Marshall Public School District. Go Tigers!

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