Welcome to the Valley-Edinburg School District's monthly newsletter! We've decided to send out a district-wide newsletter, from a variety of personnel perspectives in our schools. We hope that this brings you up to speed on what we're doing and maybe answer a few questions along the way.

February was an extremely exciting month for North Dakota sports as the North Dakota High School Activities Association approved to implement the proposed three-class basketball plan for the 2023-2024 school year! This came as a big surprise to many of us. Although the board met to hear the original proposal back in December, they chose to not pass the plan, but to appoint a focus group to examine the grievances brought to the table during the meeting: mostly, the use of the multiplier to determine enrollment numbers.

On February 8 the NDHSAA Board of Directors met again to hear the revisions to the original proposal (dropping the multiplier), and it was at this meeting that they decided to approve and implement the three-class plan for next school year. So what does this mean for the Drayton Valley-Edinburg Titans?

As our total enrollment (between Drayton's 9-12 students and Valley-Edinburg's 9-12 students) is fewer than 162, we are classified as Class B Basketball. There will be 8 total districts, and 4 total regions in the state. Starting next school year, the DVE Titans will be part of District 3, which will be comprised of 9 teams: DVE, Cavalier, North Prairie, North Border, St. John, North Star, Langdon-E-M, Park River-FL, and Midway/Minto. District 3 and District 4 will be part of Region 2, the northeast corner of the state. The top 4 teams from District 3 and District 4 will play in the Region 2 Tournament. The top 2 teams from the region tournaments will play at the Class B State Tournament next spring. If the 2nd place team has not played the 3rd place team, a challenge game will be played the day after the championship game.

Due to their total enrollment, schools like Grafton, Hillsboro/Central Valley, and Thompson are now classified as Class A. Of course, we will continue to play these teams, but they will not be part of our tournament play.

We are excited to see this shift in basketball for our students, and we hope that the passing of this plan achieves the three goals created by the designers of this proposal:

1. Increase student athlete participation in the sport of basketball.
2. Improve the level of competitive balance among ND schools.
3. Increase the number of ND schools participating in the sport of basketball.

As mentioned in the October newsletter, we have a River Watch team at Valley-Edinburg.

I have received many questions this year about what this team does during the year and what

experiences they can glean from, so for this month I will be providing more information on what

River Watch is all about. Mr. Tucker and I run our River Watch team. We have 10

students on our team with many more students to fill those numbers in the years to come. We

have already been out to sample the 3 branches of the Park River on 3 different occasions and

have also been to East Grand Forks and paddled in 10-person canoes.

We have been working on our River Watch Forum project over the several months and

have historically done very well on those projects. Our project this year was using prior data to

delineate the Park River watershed into its 3 branches. We will be at the Alerus Center on

3/01/23 for the Annual River Watch forum. We are very excited to see how we did on our

project and to further our knowledge of our watershed as well as other. The attachments are

resources that are available to help answer any questions you might have.

I would like to extend a huge thank you to all families who supported our Playground Fundraiser through selling with your child, donating and sharing out our fundraiser! I am pleased to announce that our fundraiser brought in over $10,000 in profit towards upgraded, ADA friendly, playground pieces that will be purchased this spring and installed by next school year! We greatly appreciate the support for this opportunity to provide for our students.

We had a wonderful turnout during Family Conference Night for all grade levels. It is such a great time to connect with our families and share in the successes and areas to grow for our students. We are only a call, text or email away so remember if anything comes up please let your child’s teacher or myself know so we can address and handle any concerns you may have. We can not fix something we do not know about.

As we welcome warmer temps and nicer weather, it is important to highlight spring safety. We will be reviewing the bus, playground and drop off/pick up expectations as kids are excited to get outside. Also, we will be hosting Safety on Wheels for our students from Safe Kids out of Grand Forks. You will be receiving a form to purchase a discounted helmet from Safe Kids if you choose to do so. Keep an eye out for that form if you are interested!

We are excited to celebrate Readers Month during the month of March. During the month, your child will have dress up days for Dr. Seuss week, participate in a reading challenge and have an opportunity to take part in our first “BookRaiser!” Your child’s teacher will be sending more information home regarding our BookRaiser towards the end of the month. We encourage all families to engage in 20 minutes of reading a night for continued growth and success for your child. With our BookRaiser, students will be able to earn books for their home library. We are excited to bring this event to our students! Lastly, to end Reading Month, we will be having our annual Readers Night on March 30th. We hope to see you there!

Tips to cultivate lifelong readers:

1. Show your child how important reading is by doing it yourself.

2. Read to your child every day for 20 minutes or shorter increments.

3. Make a reading family fun night - turn your living room into a library!

4. Give books as gifts for birthdays, holidays and rewards!

5. Set up your children’s bedrooms to encourage reading.

As always, please feel free to reach out or stop in!

The focus for February’s character trait is citizenship, which has a variety of points that can be considered a part of it. One basic definition of citizenship is a legal relationship between a person and a country. This means usually the country you're born in, live in and support in return for protection. Another way to be a citizen is to become a naturalized citizen where you must apply for citizenship. You can also be a dual citizen, which means you can be a citizen of more than one country.

In elementary school the definition of citizenship means being respectful of other people and their property, being respectful of school property, following school rules, displaying good character (responsibility, honesty, good listening, kindness) as well as giving back to the school community. There are easy ways to explain citizenship to all grade levels. The easiest way to do this for younger students is to use the following five themes of citizenship:

1. Respect - Yourself, Others and Property

2. Courage - Being Brave Enough to Do the Right Thing and to Ask for Help if You Need It

3. Responsibility - Being Responsible for What You Do and Say

4. Compassion- Be Caring and Kind

5. Honesty- Telling the Truth and Being Trustworthy

An important example would be showing respect to others by allowing them to finish speaking which means no blurting. Another example could be being courageous by standing up for someone who is being picked on. Citizenship can easily be modeled by everyone a person comes into contact with as we just need to be more aware of how we talk, what we do and take responsibility for our actions no matter what.