Lauren Hollister, Staff Reporter

A data warehouse presentation was given by Marica Armogost, the middle school principal, to the Williston school board curriculum committee Monday evening.

“In order for kids to grow and become more proficient we need a way to show data,” Armogost said.

According to Armogost, most student data from test scores used to come back to the school from testing agencies. The information would then be distributed to parents and students and would also be filed at the school. “And that was the end of it,” Armogost said. With No Child Left Behind, there is a larger number of scores that needs to be tracked over the years to track student progress and detect problems, either in the student or in a certain teacher.

Armogost said that the state of North Dakota has created a data warehouse in recent years but only the larger school districts like Fargo and Bismarck took advantage of it. Armogost felt that Williston should look at a data warehouse again now that they are more cost effective and because of their necessity in being able to track the progress of students from year to year. “We have a need, our kids have a need,” Armogost said.

Armogost described the data as needing to be in a format that can easily be called up. It also needs to be able to be called up in a variety of ways. The warehouse would have the ability to collate the data and show student or even specific classroom progress over a period of time.

The committee decided that they wanted to investigate the issue some more before sending some sort of recommendation to the school board through Duane DeMars, the committee chairperson. Like the Personnel and Policy Committee, the Curriculum Committee consists of teachers, school administrators, a school board member and a district office representative.

At the meeting Dr. Kent Hjelmstad, the district office representative and interim superintendent, led a committee orientation. He described the function of the committee as a group that meets to discuss and overview issues and then send them to the board. The committee is unable to vote or make motions on issues.

“If you become knowledgeable regarding some topic then we have reached our goal,” said Hjelmstad.

At each meeting Hjelmstad will also be taking notes of what is discussed.

He will then distribute those summaries to each school in the district in order for people to know exactly what happened and what the issues at hand are.

“We are not making any decisions, we are becoming more knowledgeable about a topic,” he said.