During their monthly meeting, Rugby Schools Superintendent Mike McNeff presented to the Rugby Public School District No. 5 Board of Education a report on the district’s strategic planning and demographics.

The strategic plan for 2020-2025 is in the draft stage, and is slated for a vote of approval at the board’s July meeting.

McNeff explained in a presentation Monday morning that as part of the new strategic plan, the School Improvement team identified five priority areas: school culture and climate, 21st century readiness and personalized learning, academic engagement and standards-referenced instruction, professional learning and development, and facility planning.

Of the five areas, several had at least one goal.

Under School Culture and Climate, goals were to provide comprehensive emergency procedures, and to improve education via student behavior and social emotional learning.

Under Academic Engagement and Standards-Referenced Instruction, goals were to use a standards-referenced education model, and to use a learning management system that would align with that model.

Under Facility Planning, one goal was improvements at Ely Elementary to address space issues.

In terms of demographics, the district consists of 804 square miles of land. It has a k-12 enrollment of 587 students with a cost per pupil at $12,869.05 as of fiscal year 2019.

McNeff explained that the majority of school funding comes from state foundation aid, and school districts have become more reliant on it with recent limits on their local levying authority. The formula for foundation aid has also shifted from taxable valuations to enrollment-based on the spring average daily membership, or days a student has been enrolled, from the previous year.

Other statistics including budget, academic programs, services offered in the district and historic enrollment figures were also presented.

The public can access the full demographic and strategic planning report online at www.rugby.k12.nd.us/domain/20.