Prairie Rose Elementary School

With enrollment near 500, Prairie Rose is Dickinson, ND’s largest elementary school. The population of Dickinson continues to grow in the wake of the oil boom, prompting district leaders to consider how they will continue to serve students.

Prairie Rose Elementary School joined the North Dakota Full-Service Community Schools Consortium (NDFSCS) in December 2022 along with their neighbors at Heart River Elementary, making Dickinson the first district in the state to have two full-service community schools.

After spending eight years at the middle and high school levels in Dickinson, one teacher was beginning to feel the effects of burnout. So, when the opportunity arose to work with students and schools in a new capacity as Site Coordinator, they jumped at it, saying “This is soul work.”

The Prairie Rose Principal believes that the Site Coordinator’s experience working with staff, students, and families in the district makes them the perfect person to bridge the gap between the school and community.

“Their passion shines through, and I appreciate that they have that reference as a former educator in our district,” the Principal said. “They know our community well enough to understand the needs that are happening.”

The Site Coordinator works to identify partners in the two pipelines that Prairie Rose has identified as top priorities: mental health and family engagement. In May 2023, Prairie Rose and Heart River Elementary Schools both implemented virtual wellness services through the North Dakota eCare School Health Program. This partnership allows students to receive safe, effective care from a registered nurse via telehealth. The Site Coordinator also identifies opportunities for continued programming to support behavioral health.

Like many schools across the nation, Prairie Rose has seen a drop in family engagement since the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We’re really trying to open those doors and welcome people back in, let them know that they’re welcome and we want them to be a part of this community,” the Principal said.

One way that Prairie Rose is working to increase family engagement is through events, such as the Dive into Books Literacy Carnival, a collaboration every May with Heart River Elementary that Prairie Rose’s principal sees as crucial to academic success: “We created a low-stakes environment for our families to come in and engage in a discussion of literacy and how important it is for kids to be reading through the summer.”

In addition to forging new partnerships, the Principal also hopes to build upon initiatives started by social workers at Prairie Rose: partnering with High Plains Dental to provide dental care, distributing food through the BackPack program, and working with Sanford Health to coordinate flu shot clinics.

“We’re trying to accommodate some of those pieces that families might not necessarily know how to capitalize on,” the Principal said. “We’re offering that through our doors.”