New website and app coming for the Grantsburg School District

The district has been using a relatively low-cost service run by rSchool Today, which has filled their needs for years, but has limits and could be improved.

“We’ve used rSchool, and it’s worked well for us, easy to find information, but besides that, it’s kind of lacking,” Watt said. 

The subcommittee met with the three vendors earlier in February, and Watt then did extensive research on the three firms to weigh positives, negatives and comments from other districts that use them, with Apptegy getting the nod, in part due to their complete pricing estimates and their ability to dovetail the new website with a new Grantsburg Schools application (app).

“Apptegy really rose to the top,” Watt said, adding that they have an easy-to-use alert messaging system that can alert residents via text message, E-mail, social media or through their created school district app. “Apptegy also had great references and history (with their customers).” 

The new system has some financial downsides, as it will cost over $18,000 between set-up and initial contracting and migrating the current information to the new website. The annual recurring costs are expected to be $8,780. 

Watt admitted there will be a sort of transition period between sites once the new system is complete and ready to go live.

“There might be a little overlap, before everything is in place,” Watt said, noting that the final product should make it worth it. “I think you’ll be pleased with the final product.”

The board approved the contract with Apptegy unanimously.

In other board action:

• The cooperative wrestling program with Luck, Frederic, and Siren was the subject of a presentation by head coach Jake Nichols. He outlined the latest success of the program, and noted the growing participation at the lower grade levels for wrestling in the Bulldog wrestling feeder program.

“It’s really encouraging, because we are building (in the Bulldog program), and our numbers are all going up,” Nichols said, noting that of the 19 varsity wrestlers in the LFGS cooperative program, seven were from Grantsburg, and five ended up finishing the season. “The next couple of years, those numbers will continue to grow.” 

There was some concern about how the costs are shared among the four school districts, as it is now apparently just split four ways equally, regardless of how many students participate from each individual district. The annual costs for Grantsburg last year were placed at approximately $4,700, as the Luck School District is the head of the wrestling cooperative and does the billing. 

Siren athletic director Ryan Karsten was on hand, as well, and encouraged the board to extend and continue the cooperative sharing, as he noted that there are likely to be several females involved in the wrestling program in the near future, as well.

“Girls’ high school wrestling is one of the biggest growing sports numbers, right now, across the nation,” Karsten said. 

The school board did not have the wrestling cooperative contract or funding on the meeting agenda, so they could not take a vote, but board president Dave Dahlberg said the presentation really helped the board with future funding questions and said they would take the question up at a future meeting.

“Just so you know, there will a few other programs lining up behind you, as well,” Dahlberg said. 

• The board approved a cost-of-living adjustment of 3.5% for all teaching staff at the brick-and-mortar school, with endorsement from the teacher’s union, with iForward raises discussed later in closed session. 

• The 2023-2024 school calendar was approved, which has the district starting school after Labor Day, which Watt said will help with this summers’ construction projects.

“It’s sort of the traditional calendar, how it looked in the past,” Watt said. 

• The board approved a contract with the village of Grantsburg for continued use of the community center for their gymnastics program, after several months of back-and-forth and adjustments by both sides. The contract raises some of the hourly costs to the district, but keep many prices the same, while still requiring occasional “take downs” of the gymnastic equipment for community rentals. 

“Exclusivity is not of the contract, and the difference is $3 and hour room rental fees,” Watt said. “It’s much the same as the last contract, and may be a better one for us.”

• The board approved continued participation in the gymnastics cooperative, which Grantsburg is the lead on between Grantsburg, Webster, Unity and Luck, with news that Frederic may be interested in becoming part of the program next year, as they have some interest from at least one student. 

Athletic director Addison Czeck said that adding Frederic would not make a big enough difference to force the cooperative into a higher division.

“The possibility of the addition of Frederic just happened,” Watt said, as the board approved a contract that would work either way, with or without Frederic’s involvement.