Moorhead Area Public Schools is proud to announce that both Horizon Middle School and Moorhead High School have earned the status of BARR Accredited Schools from the BARR (Building Assets, Reducing Risks) Center.
What is BARR? Horizon BARR Coordinator Rachel Lerum describes it best: “BARR is a school improvement program that really focuses on building relationships—staff-to-student, student-to-student and staff-to-staff. The program achieves that by having intentional, solution-focused, strength-based conversations about students.”
The origin of BARR within Moorhead Schools can be traced to the 2019-20 school year at Horizon East, where the school piloted the program with 7th and 8th grade classes—now juniors and seniors at MHS. When that school year was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the pillars of BARR were there to uphold some normalcy for the 7th and 8th graders.
“We hit the ground running to implement BARR in 2019 and thank goodness we had the program in place in the spring of 2020,” explained Lerum, “because we were able to support the students from afar that year and into the hybrid learning environment of the 2020-21 school year.”
With the return to a normal full-time school schedule in 2021-22, students became more connected with BARR. This growth has been evident as students who attended Horizon East since that time have matriculated to MHS, bringing BARR awareness and enthusiasm with them.
“I’ve seen the buy-in for BARR improve at Moorhead High School significantly over the past couple years,” noted MHS BARR Coordinator Dave Kanuch. “Incoming students look forward to BARR supports and learning opportunities like I-Time lessons and know that staff are frequently getting together to visit about the students and discuss their strengths.”
To earn their BARR accreditation schools had to show improvement in key metrics since implementing BARR, including academics and socioemotional growth. Horizon and MHS displayed an improvement in academics by seeing students with scores in the “not proficient” range drop from 45% in 2020 to 24.5% in 2023. In terms of socioemotional growth at the schools, an early 2024 connectedness survey showed that 97.3% of students said they had a positive relationship with at least one adult at their school and 98.3% of students reported having at least one friend at school.
“I think in large buildings like Horizon and especially Moorhead High, it can be easy for kids to get lost or wonder where they belong,” said Lerum. “When you have teachers being intentional about relationships with their students, it can help students feel connected and valued.”
BARR’s success at the district’s largest buildings has led to expansion of the program: during the 2023-24 school year, Marcy Jorda became the MAPS Elementary BARR Coordinator. The BARR journey also continues for Horizon and MHS: now that they are accredited, they can work toward being BARR Schools of Excellence. A distinction based on criteria of continuous quality and fidelity of the implementation of the program.