The Fort Dodge Community School District, striving for student literacy improvements, saw more impressive results at the board’s Monday meeting.

Middle School Principal Shawn Chesteen presented the group with a look at what sixth through eighth grade students have been accomplishing.

“We have a building goal to increase by 8 percent on the state’s student readiness program charts,” he said. “There are several avenues in which we are working towards this.”

Chesteen said those avenues are a reading achievement program in place for special education students, several RAPs and two phonics lesson groups meeting regularly, phonics screeners for intervention done for students who show skill deficits, and sentence building and multisyllabic work being done in English language arts classes as well keeping at-risk students moving forward with an e-reading screener.

“Our fall to winter reading data is up in all grades,” he added. “We’re up 5 percent in sixth grade, 2 percent in seventh grade and 3 percent in eighth grade.”

The board also:

• Approved the Ed-Flex waiver request for Title I and Title IV. According to district Curriculum Director Teri Boezinger, the waiver comes from the state combining title programs 1 and 1B and two through four. “It gives us more flexibility in being able to spend or carryover finances from those programs than was previously available,” she said.

• Approved a budget estimate for publication and set April 27, as a second public hearing for the 2026-27 certified budget. Brandon Hansel, the district’s executive director of financial services, pointed out that revenue stands at $69 million and $94 million for expenditures. “Revenue is more in 2025-26 because money is available from the sale of school bonds,” Hansel said. “Expenses will be more the following year due to allocating those funds for project work.”

• Approved publication of and set a public hearing on the 2025-26 budget amendment for April 27.