Votes at a glance: Grand Rapids board passes insurance renewal, teacher nonrenewals, grants; tables parking-lot award

At its meeting the Grand Rapids Public School District board approved a number of motions spanning benefits, personnel, grants, contracts and policies. Below are short summaries of each board action recorded in the meeting.

- Probationary teacher nonrenewals: The board approved nonrenewal of probationary staff as recommended by administration under Minn. Stat. §122A.40, subd. 5. Names read into the record included Brenda Broberg; Ryan Christiansen; Wendy Gray; Anne Huttner; Mallory Matheson; Tiffany Morgan; Christine Niemi; Summer Opatich; Charmaine Seeley; Sherry Tremblay; Kayla Wass; Simon Wilson; Elliot Wolfson; Rachel Newman (part-time 0.3); and Benjamin Panchashen (part-time 0.2). Administration estimated 80–90% of those tied to licensure postings may return once licensure or posting requirements are met.

- Health-insurance renewal and premiums: The board accepted the fringe benefits committee recommendation to renew HealthPartners for two years and approved a 6.5% premium increase for plan year 2025–26. The district said the increase is below market and estimated employee contributions would rise by about $7 per month for single coverage and $15 per month for family coverage; deductibles and HSA impacts will rise slightly.

- February claims and minutes: The board approved the February 2025 claims totaling $5,761,834.16 and accepted minutes from the March 3 meeting.

- Safe Routes to School boost grant: The board approved accepting a one-year Safe Routes to School BOOST grant of $27,820 to continue coordinator services, fund traffic-garden expansion at Cohasset and Nashwauk-Keewatin, and purchase eight adaptive "All Abilities" bikes for use at middle- and high-school levels.

- RJEMS parking-lot construction: The board reviewed bids to reconstruct the RJEMS parking lot tied to a MnDOT grant. The lowest bid was $497,000 (William J. Schwartz & Son), above the $469,000 grant and an engineer estimate of $445,000. Board members expressed concern about the variance and potential change orders; after discussion they moved to table award of the contract until the April 7 meeting to review contract type and engineer estimates.

- Active-transportation grant agreement: Board discussion indicated staff will finalize bid approvals before returning the active-transportation program grant agreement to the board.

- Community-education leadership contracts: The board approved leadership-contract participation for the Itasca-area community-education collaboration with ISD 2 Hill City joining Greenway, Deer River and Nashwauk-Keewatin. Officials said leadership costs are allocated among partners based on district population.

- Independent provider application: The board approved Star of the North Figure Skating as an independent provider, allowing students to participate in the activity that is not run directly by the district.

- Big Fork field trip: The board approved a pivot of a previously planned Italy-Greece trip to Greece-only after safety concerns led administrators to remove Italy from the itinerary. Administrators said the tour company allowed payments to be applied to the Greece-only trip to avoid loss of student deposits.

- Policy updates: The board approved amendments to policies 4.13 and 5.12 on a single reading and adopted policy 6.24 (online learning) as final. Policy 7.04 (capital-asset threshold) received first reading.

- Capital-asset listing: The board received the annual capital-asset inventory as information; the district reported about $217 million in capital assets and $68 million in accumulated depreciation at fiscal-year-end 2024.

Motions were typically approved by voice vote; a few items used roll-call (the probationary nonrenewals were recorded on roll call with board members answering yes). Where contract awards required further vetting, the board tabled action to allow staff to provide additional documentation.