Board approves traditional calendar

The 2025-26 Hill City School District  school calendar was approved by the  Hill City School District Board of Education at its Nov. 11 meeting.

Typically this would have been approved in  the spring but  superintendent Blake Gardner chose to hold off as a result of the Hwy. 385 road construction project. The calendar looks like a traditional school calendar with classes beginning after Labor Day and students in school until May 22. Gardner said it was an “opportunity to show empathy” for the families that live in the construction corridor. The semester will look a bit lopsided and students will still be on campus early for sports, but Gardner stressed, “we’re doing right by those families out there.” 

Hill City is well over the state required amount of  seat time and students will have 171 teacher contact days. 

Some school board members wondered why Hill City doesn’t use a traditional calendar each year, saying that tourist season keeps getting extended and some businesses lose their employees as a result of the pre-Labor Day start. 

High school principal Todd Satter stressed that academics “drive the bus” in Hill City and that data shows that  students do worse when  semester exams occur after Christmas break.

Satter and elementary school principal Samantha Weaver praised students on their performance while sharing data from the Department of Education report card for the first quarter of school.

Data shows the high school is the top Black Hills Conference school with a Student Performance Index (SPI) of 81.3. 

Satter says math is the weakest area “not only here but across the nation.”

Review classes seemed to help in their area, according to Satter. The SPI is based on four indicators and Satter says Hill City students do very well in the high school completion category.

Satter does not like that college and career readiness is lumped together as one indicator.

Satter praised the district for its course offerings saying, “all our kids take a pretty healthy course load here.”

Board member Todd Grabow says that the SPI data is important. 

“People are looking at this data,” says Grabow, who says he gets calls from families and realtors who look at the data to determine where their next move will be.

Hill City’s elementary SPI score went up by seven points, “which is huge, exciting, ginormous,” says Weaver. She says chronic absenteeism is still an issue but that, “our attendance rate is 90 percent. That’s very nice.” 

Weaver is trying to motivate students with incentives and alerting parents as well.

The high school has a 9 percent chronic absenteeism rate while the elementary school’s rate is 12 percent. Board resident Eric Lind asked if there was a common theme to the chronic truancies.

“I would say a little bit of economics plays a part of it,”  Weaver said.

Special education director Toni Brun said she is anticipating 73 students in the child count, which is a couple higher than typical.

Board  members approved creating  a paraprofessional mentor program. The money would come out of the special education fund.

Member Rob Timm said the program was a step in the right direction but did not feel paraprofessionals  get paid enough.

“We felt this was at least a starting point,” says Gardner.

Brun agreed saying, “I’m excited to have this for them.” 

She noted her paraprofessionals want more training and support. The program would give a mentor paraprofessional a $500 stipend and a $250 stipend to the mentee upon completion of the required criteria.

The district is still looking for coaches for some sports. Anyone interested can contact athletic director Wade Ginsbach for more information.  Ginsbach said that it seems like coaches are not sticking around as long as they used to, adding that not a lot of teachers are coaching either.

Teacher Donna VanNess will retire at the end of the school year.

Gardner says that VanNess has “literally changed lives and made generational impacts,” on students.

The board discussed but did not take action on using unallocated Rural Education Achievement Program funds  to hire  a title paraprofessional. These are use it or lose it funds that would be available until the end of the school year. 

Board member Carmen Ronish said it was scary to put in a position for the remainder of the year knowing that the individual would be hired until May only. Weaver wants the paraprofessional to be used in  kindergarten where she says there is “quite a learning gap” due to the different skills of the 20 students in that class.

 The next HCSB meeting is Dec. 9 at 6 p.m.