On March 3 our club will have its first meeting at our new location, Flaherty's Arden Bowl, 1273 W. County Road E in Arden Hills.  With the fortunate increase in membership the board believed the club has outgrown the capacity of the meeting room at Shore 96 and a move was necessary.  Flaherty's has a larger meeting room with a direct entrance from the parking lot at the rear of Flaherty's building.  Breakfast will be served buffet style.  Flaherty's has a large flat screen TV and projector for our speakers as well as plenty of parking.  Flaherty's is located just east of the intersection of Snelling Ave. N. and County Road E.

    

We have appreciated the hospitality of Shore 96 the past several years and will begin holding the meetings of the board of directors at Shore 96 on February 17.  We will need some volunteers to move the Rotary property from Shore 96 to Flaherty's at the end of the month.  Many thanks to Kay Baker for exploring possible new meeting locations and to Jerry Peterson for helping to negotiate the financial arrangements.

    

Club volunteers led by Ken Hola will be serving water from Cub, food from Mansetti's and beer from Fulton at the Taste of Shoreview February 20 from 4:45 to 8 pm.  Mike Spellman and I will help Ken but we still need two additional members to volunteer.  The Taste of Shoreview is held at the Shoreview Community Center.  This is our second year appearing at the Taste to increase the visibility of the club.  Contact Ken if you can help.

    

Please mark your calendars for Rotary Super Bingo at the Slice of Shoreview July 24-26 and the Taste of the Hops fundraiser at Snail Lake Park August 13 from 5-8 pm.  More details will follow as we get closer to those events.

    

Ken Hola and Mike Spellman represented our Rotary Club and collected food for the Ralph Reeder Food Shelf at the Dive In at the Shoreview Community Center in January.

Member Birthdays

 

Today was our quarterly club assembly - a meeting to discuss club business with no outside speaker.  President Bill Klumpp led us through a number of topics, including status of our search for a larger meeting site, status of a possible third fund-raiser involving a travel gift certificate raffle, possible additional community service projects, and the upcoming district group cultural exchange program and our summer youth exchange program.  Mike Spellman also provided an update on his work to obtain funding from other clubs for our pending WASH project in Nigeria.  He has been diligently visiting a number of other clubs with great success, including a hopefully very significant contribution from the Minneapolis Club.  Also, we learned that an anonymous donor apparently slipped a $1,500 check into the Salvation Army kettle during our Thursday bell ringing shift last month at Cub, so that our 2-day total added up to over $2,200!

Today's meeting was offsite.  We met at the Mounds View School District Headquarters building in Shoreview.  Assistant Superintendent and former club member Jeff Ridlehoover provided an update on current happenings and priorities for the district, followed by a tour of the building, formerly the local Ramsey County Library building.  A lot is happening within the district following recent passage of a property tax increase to fund updates and additions to nearly all buildings within the district.  This was necessary due to increases in enrollment together with the advanced age of the facilities.  The district continues to out-perform all others in the state in terms of average SAT scores.  And MN schools are already higher than any other state in the country.  While proud of this achievement, the district has also made student mental health a high priority, given the national trend of increased teen mental health issues.  There are multiple things going on within the district's "Be Kind To Your Mind" initiative.  Our school district is also a leader in the nationwide trend toward providing students with early college coursework and vocational programs through it's "Pathways to Possibilities" initiative.  The district has also created a plan to deal with the disruption of multiple school closings due to weather.  There will now be "Flexible Learning Opportunity Days" that provide activities that can be done from home, to avoid having to keep schools open later in the spring for make-up days.  It's clear that our school district is a leader in adapting to our ever-changing world - something we can all be proud of!

Today's speaker was Jeff Dahlman, Executive Director at Kids In Need Minnesota.  This organization operates a resource center in Roseville which provides a retail environment where teachers from eligible schools are invited to shop.  Shelves are stocked with school supplies, office supplies, cleaning supplies, arts and crafts, books and more.  Eligible schools are those with 70% or more of the student population participating in the Federal Free and Reduced Lunch Program.  There are currently 200 such schools in Minnesota. These shopping visits are free of charge.  Their mission is to ensure that every child is prepared to learn and succeed in the classroom by providing supplies to students who otherwise could not afford them.  This organization is supported by many local companies such as Target and 3M and also has many volunteers who help with things such as helping teachers fill backpacks with supplies and organizing drives to collect new materials for the resource center.  This is a national organization -- there are 43 such centers across the country.