Spring is in the air! After months of snow, cold, and shorter days, we’re finally seeing signs of green grass, sunshine, budding trees, and flowers. This is also the time when our district and Focus Beyond begin planning for next year, and we want to keep you in the loop about our staffing and budgeting process for the 2025-2026 school year.

Right now, we’re gathering student enrollment data to help shape our plans. Many of our students transition to Focus Beyond after completing 12th grade to continue receiving support for unmet transition needs. Since we serve students from all of our district high schools, enrollment numbers guide our staffing decisions. Our goal is always to align staffing with each student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) needs and district guidelines to ensure they get the best support possible.

How We Plan for Staffing & Budgeting

We work closely with our leadership team to determine how many teachers, paraprofessionals, and support staff we need to provide high-quality services to our students. At the same time, our budget planning ensures that we have the resources needed for instruction, transition services, and any specialized support required.

Timeline for Staffing and Budgeting

• February - March: Collect student enrollment data and assess staffing needs.

• April: Submit staffing recommendations and budget proposals for district review.

• May - June: Finalize staffing assignments and communicate placements to staff.

• Summer: Prepare for the upcoming school year with professional development and classroom readiness.

We truly value your input throughout this process. If you have any questions or ideas about staffing and budgeting, please don’t hesitate to reach out or share your input via the Google Form linked here: https://forms.gle/yqAcWZgdoTKot9ed8. Your thoughts and feedback help shape the best possible learning environment for our students.

Thank you for all you do every day to support our students and each other. Your dedication makes a difference, and we’re grateful to have such a strong team of adults (students, families, community partners and staff) working together. Looking forward to finishing this year strong and another great year ahead!

At Focus Beyond, we strive to help all students gain a deeper understanding of and passion for life-long learning. To accomplish that goal, we rely on community partnerships and the expertise and experience of our staff. Our students quickly learn that there are many training and career preparation opportunities in addition to college.

Today, the focus is: Inver Hills Community College (IHCC).

We have had Focus Beyond students take classes at IHCC through PSEO in the past. IHCC is a two-year community college located in Inver Grove Heights, MN. Students may be interested in IHCC because it is accessible by city bus and it offers a unique variety of programs.

Inver Hills College offers programs in Criminal Justice, Special Education Foundations, and many more areas. The college also offers an array of programs in the Arts taught by accomplished artists. The paintings below are from a gallery displaying student art.

If you have further questions, please contact Craig Olsen at craig.olsen@spps.org

Click the picture for Video instructions on how to use the virtual room

It's Medical March! This month we will be working on sharing how we feel to a parent, caretaker, nurse, or doctor. The Core Words for this month are: "I feel" and "I need" and exploring the Health page. It's a great time to practice advocating for ourselves!

Click the image Below!

This is Stacy. She was nominated for the Student Voice Award to showcase her amazing self-advocacy skills. She is currently enrolled in post-secondary enrollment options (PSEO) at St. Paul College where she has advocated for her needs in and out of class. She has requested accommodations, followed through with tutoring, and even asked to revise her semester schedule to better fit her needs and goals.

Stacy has also asked for assistance in her job search, identifying what she wants and does not want in a workplace. She has soared to new heights of success and maturity this year, taking on new independent tasks on her own or with minimal support. Her biggest accomplishment recently was passing her road test and getting her driver’s license.

A great big Focus Beyond shout-out to Stacy for her amazing success and use of self-advocacy and self-determination skills. Keep up the great work, Stacy!

Are you enrolled in VRS? If so, have you had your yearly IEP meeting yet this school year? If you have not had your IEP meeting yet, please remember to invite your VRS counselor! It is important that we are there.

If you are not enrolled in VRS and would like to hear more about we partner with the school and help with employment goals, consider inviting VRS staff to your IEP meeting for an orientation. We can also provide orientations outside of IEP meetings. Please let your case manager know if you are interested.

Sincerely,

VRS staff at Focus Beyond (Analynn, Jenni, Kelly, and Clarissa)

We are extremely honored and excited to be hosting our First Ever Site Council meeting at Focus Beyond! The meeting will be held in the cafeteria, open to all Staff, Families, Students and Community members. Food and Childcare will be provided. Please RSVP to help us plan for child care and food.

Family Engagement Plan

Families Right to Know

Focus Beyond School Report Card

All school documents can be translated or interpreters made available upon request. Please contact Micaela.Smith@spps.org

SPANISH

Todos los documentos pueden ser traducidos o interpretados oralmente si usted lo solicita

HMONG

Tej ntaub ntawv tom tsev kawm ntawv uas xa los rau nej, peb yuav pab txhais thiab nrhiav neeg txhais lus rau nej yog nej hais qhia peb

SOMALI

"Dhammaan dukumiintiyada iskuulka waa la turjumi karaa ama waxaa la heli karaa turjumaan haddii la codsado"

KAREN

Newsletter Translation

Prefer a language other than English? You can open the newsletter link and click a button on the right (on a computer) or at the bottom (on a mobile device) to have it translated into many different languages. Please know that the translation function may be inaccurate or incomplete. If you have any questions, please call us at 651-293-5997.

SPANISH

¿Prefiere un idioma que no sea inglés? Puede abrir el enlace del boletín y hacer clic en el botón a la derecha (en una computadora) o en la parte inferior (en un dispositivo móvil) para traducirlo a muchos idiomas diferentes. Tenga en cuenta que la función de traducción puede ser inexacta o incompleta. Si tiene alguna pregunta, llámenos al 651-293-5997.

SOMALI

Ma waxaad doorbideysaa luuqad aan aheyn af-Ingiriis? Waxaad furi kartaa lifaaqa wargeysyada oo guji batoonka midigta (ee kumbiyuutarkaaga) ama xagga hoose (ee taleefankaaga gacanta) si aad wargeyska ugu tarjuntid luuqado badan oo kala duwan. Fadlan ogow in natiijada turjumaaddu ay noqon karto mid aan sax ahayn ama aan dhammaystirnayn. Haddii aad wax su'aalo ah qabtid, fadlan naga soo wac 651-293-5997.

HMONG

Puas xav tau ua lwm hom lus? Nej qhib txoj kab mus rau hauv daim ntawv xov xwm thiab nias lub pob ntawm sab xis hauv lub koos pis tawj, los sis yog lwm hom twj no ces nyob hauv qab, ces yuav muaj txhais ua ntau hom lus. Nco ntsoov tias cov lus txhais no yuav tsis raug txhua lo los sis txhais tiav tiav. Yog nej muaj lus nug, thov hu rau peb ntawm 651-293-5997.

KAREN

ကျိာ်ဂုၤဂၤတခါလၢနအဲၣ်ဒိးအီၤ လၢအတမ့ၢ် အဲကလံးကျိာ်န့ၣ်အိၣ်ဧါ. နအိးထီၣ်ကွၢ်လံာ်တၢ်ကစီၣ်ပှာ်ဘျးစဲ ဒီးစံၢ်လီၤဖဲ ပှာ်ဘျးစဲအဖီခိၣ်ဖဲစုထွဲတကပၤ(လၢခီၣ်ဖၠူထၢၣ်ဖီခိၣ်) မ့တမ့ၢ် စံၢ်လီၤဖဲတၢ်ဖီလာ် (လၢနလီတဲစိ ဖီခိၣ်) ဒ်သိး တၢ်ကကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤလၢကျိာ်အဂုၤအဂၤအဂီၢ်သ့ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဝံသးစူၤသ့ၣ်ညါလၢ လံာ်လၢ တၢ်ကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤန့ၣ် ကအိၣ်ဝဲဒီး တၢ်အကမၣ် မ့တမ့ၢ် တၢ်တလၢတပှဲၤသ့ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. နမ့ၢ်အိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်သံကွၢ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်, ဝံသးစူၤကိးပှၤဖဲ 651-293-5997 န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.