NEW ULM — The votes cast in the 2018 District 88 election were canvassed and approved Thursday by the New Ulm School Board.

The results of the vote in the race for three school board seats showed voters selected Steven M. Gag with 5,408 votes, Amanda Groebner with 5,336 votes, Melissa Sunderman with 5,137 votes, and Duane Winter with 4,882 votes. As a result, Groebner, a first-time candidate for the board, was elected, along with Gag and Sunderman, and Winter, the current board chairman with 12 years on the board, was defeated. Gag and Sunderman are incumbent members of the board.

The new board members will be seated on the first Monday in January 2019.

Following the canvassing meeting, the board held a study session where they heard about a pair of new initiatives this year.

Caitlin Wilson, who was hired this year to a new position of Special Services Counselor, told school board members about her job as it is developing after the first two months of school.

Wilson said her job was seen to include a lot of one-on-one counseling with students, and that has been the case. She sees students for a variety of reasons, from emotional and social problems, to attendance and academic problems and behavioral issues.

Wilson is not taking away workload from the other two counselors at the school. Her focus is not on the fact that a student has been truant, or is failing classes, or acts out in class, but on the “why?” She talks with students to try to understand the roots of their anxieties or problems. She will meet with them to provide extra support, give them options for improvement and possibly come up with a student action plan.

In addition, Wilson has been the “Change to Chill” coordinator for the school, working with Allina Health on its program to help students reduce stress and anxiety in school. She also offers classroom career lessons, and is offering group sessions for students with similar problems.

She also is developing and delivering sessions on bullying for students.

Wilson said her future goals are to continue building relationships with Allina Health, to work on continuing Change to Chill, which has one-year funding from Allina, into an ongoing program, to develop a Minnesota Colleges in Schools curriculum for ninth- and 10th-graders as a career learning program and to follow up with 11th and 12th graders.

The board also heard from a group of teachers who are developing Eagle Enterprises, a program to help students develop real-life career skills with real-work experiences, industry-level training and career plan development.

The group is in the first year of the program to provide Career and Technical Education (CTE) training. The group has connected with local industries and employers to learn the kind of skills and training they need to provide to give students a better career opportunity.

Students would be training in areas like machining, welding, carpentry, screen printing and graphics, catering, mechanics landscaping and greenhouse, and residential construction.

Students will be forming student-run companies over a 10-year period. The companies would take orders from and partner with existing businesses, work with industry-level equipment and produce and sell products.

The goal is to provide students with the skills they need to pursue skilled work in a variety of trades as well as provide good quality employees that local businesses are looking for. Students would graduate with certifications in various areas like welding, machining and construction, and office computer systems. Teachers would work with students to have their two- to four-year post-high school plans developed and ready to execute, whether it be working, or two- or four-year college.

The group laid out a ten-year plan for its mission, and talked about the funding it needs to provide its students with industry-standard equipment to work and learn on. The funding goal is $283,000, and the program is about $95,000 short of that.

As part of its plan, the group would like to have a 200-by-200-foot building to house its activities on the school campus.