District 742

Today (Tuesday) is National Voter Registration Day, and it's a good day to make sure you're signed-up to vote on the question. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon says there are about 800,000 Minnesotans who are eligible but have not yet registered to vote.

St. Joseph took a step towards selling it's existing city hall and moving it onto the Colts Academy site. The facility committee has met several times to discuss the needs for remodeling, adding on to the existing city hall building, or building a new facility on the Colts Academy grounds.

Several weeks into the new school year, the St. Cloud area school district is still experiencing a shortage of school bus drivers. There are around 9,000 students that the district buses to and from school every day. Four independent school bus operators serve the district.

The St. Cloud Area School District has seen a slight decline in enrollment this year, after several years of growth. Total enrollment in all programs is 10,157, down from 10,196 last year.

Tech High School students are working with Habitat for Humanity to build a home that will be used by an area family in need. Tech High juniors and seniors from the career and technical education programs will be building a six-bedroom home in the parking lot on the corner of Division and 14th Avenue.

The St. Cloud area school district is budgeting just over $66 million over the next 10 years for health, safety and maintenance. The plan included expenditures for district health and safety projects, totaling $66,300,000 for the next 10 years.

Fifth grade students at Talahi Community School took part in a kindness and leadership retreat on Friday. Youth Frontiers is a nonprofit organization that led the retreat. Jean Culp is a retreat staff member and says the goal was to create a more positive school community.

This week, WJON is featuring several area superintendents to highlight their school district before the 2015-2016 school year kicks off. Today, we highlight Willie Jett, superintendent of St. Cloud area schools. Jett became superintendent in 2013.

With classes starting on Monday, the St. Cloud area school district recently launched a more user friendly website for students and their families. District 742 director of community engagement and communications Tami DeLand says they revamped the site after community complaints about the previous version being difficult to navigate.

A group of St. Cloud area middle and high school students have been hard at work recently developing their own Android mobile apps. Students spent five days last week developing, testing and downloading their apps on mobile devices. Instructer Frank Ayers says this is the first time that he's taught a summer camp like this