President Jamie Soukup called the Wagner Rotarians to order on Wednesday, February 18th. There was a smaller crowd for the usual Wednesday meeting but in the rain or shine the meeting will go on. Soukup led the members in our Rotary Grace and then called upon everyone to sing “Smile” in the absence of our song leader. There was only one guest present, Josh woods came with his wife Alison who is a Rotarian.

Patty Frei gave her Membership Minute on the history of our Rotary organization. We are close to having an important birthday—Rotary was first formed in Chicago, Illinois, in the USA, on the 23rd of February 1905. Happy 121st Birthday Rotary!

Assistant Sergeant at Arms Jerry Weber was very busy writing up fines even while he was eating his meal: $2 to Bil Frei for making Patty call Jerry to do his sergeant duties; $7 to Jordan Weber on picking on someone with a telephone to help move his household; $2 to Jamie for wearing a slogan on his sweatshirt; $2 to Jeff Doom for a lack of instructions; $2 to Becky, Linda, Patty,, Josh, Jerry, and Jamie for wearing something green when it isn’t even close to St. Patrick’s Day; $2 to Ted for saluting the Sergeant when he arrived and $2 for snubbing the Woods couple at Ted’s usual table and sitting elsewhere; $2 to Josh for wearing such shiny shoes; $2 to Tim Thaler for wearing a thermal jacket for the day; and $5.40 to Bill Frei for buying a deck of cards and not shuffling them!

Jerry then paid a Happy Fine of $2 from himself for not having to look over Jeanne Crowe’s sidewalk hedge anymore; $2 to Jamie for just because; $5 rom Deb Houseman as her grandson participated in a wrestling tournament this past weekend and he won five events; Patty Frei was $20 happy for getting a beautiful new granddaughter; and they are happy that they will be getting another grandchild in the near future. The new baby is Quincy Lee, and the next grandchild is predicted to be a boy! Alison Woods gave $5 for traveling to Iowa for a relative who placed in both the District and State wrestling tournament in the 190 lb. division.

Kathe Henke pulled a ten of Clubs from the Queen of Hearts deck of cards and the pot is now up to $17.00.

Rotarian Patty was standing in for Craig Krsnak’s job as Secretary/Treasurer and there was a new development in the attendance race. The Ted Honke Team had three misses, and the Deb Housman team had two misses with the totals coming out to be nine misses for the Honke team and seven misses for the Houseman team.

President Jamie made the announcement that the “Can Trailer” is full! If anyone is willing to drive the horse trailer to Mitchell it would be appreciated.

Rotarian Jordan Weber could not be present for the meeting, but he arranged to have his program commitment fulfilled. Superintendent Matt Yost was introduced to the membership by President Soukup. Mr. Yost gave an informative and interesting presentation with his computer beginning with enrollments which suffered during the Covid years but are now back up to normal Student enrollment beginning with kindergarten and in the year 2021 it was 840 students. The years 2022, 2023, and 2024 were down but this past 2025 enrollment was back up to 841 students.

Yost touched on several topics. In the years of 2021 to 2025 federal dollars were around nine and half million to twelve million dollars. This year 2026 federal dollars are now at 6.2 million. There is a constant demand for special education teachers. We presently have ten SPED teachers, but we can use more.

One item he is especially excited about is that there is going to be a federal literacy grant of $1.8 million dollars which will be spread out over four years. This will be of major help to teachers to be able to identify student needs in the initial stages of their education. This grant is in the process, planning, and execution stages.

WCS presently has 176 employees. Mr. Yost has been tapped to be on an education consulting board for Dusty Johnson who is going to be a candidate for Governor in South Dakota. Yost believes this is an important item and is happy to see that Mr. Johnson is interested in getting all the information about the educational needs of South Dakota.

One of the implementations that Yost has overseen in Wagner school is that every employee and student has picked out someone who is a person of experience, prominence, or influence to be in contact with at least once a week. Caring about each other is important in the Wagner school.

Yost ended his program by showing the brand that he instituted several years ago. “WE WILL.” Every student, every chance, every day is the meaning behind the motto. You can see this “We Will” on every garment that is printed for teachers, students, and the public!

Other items of interest to the Rotarians were cell phone usage, law enforcement at the school, and teacher retention. A round of applause was given to Mr. Yost. We could have listened to him for another hour and would have enjoyed every minute of it!

We adjourned in our usual fashion of recitation of The Four-Way Test: Is it the TRUTH? Is it FAIR to all concerned? Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS? Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?