Superintendent's Scoop: Top 10 Takeaways from 2025

by Paul Olson, NDVS/SB Superintendent

In an attempt to share some highlights of the year, here are my Top 10 Takeaways from 2025

1. The staff at NDVS/SB are dedicated, fun, smart, hardworking and lots of other really awesome, cool and accurate adjectives.

2. We served a whopping 534 students and adults throughout the last biennium. Woo-Hoo!

3. We had another successful legislative budget proposal leading to an appropriation to carry out our mission to serve the great citizens of North Dakota for the next 2 years.

4. We are excited at the appointment of Mr. Levi Bachmeier as the new Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of North Dakota. We wish him luck in this hugely important role and look forward to working with him.

5. Although our budget is not tied to federal funding, we at NDVS/SB will continue to monitor changes at the U.S. Department of Education that have the potential to harm outcomes for students with low vision or blindness.

6. NDVS/SB hosted a very successful Dakotas AER Conference in September with a strong emphasis on assistive technology that served professionals in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota.

7. A major, exciting initiative to strengthen assistive technology assessment and delivery of services to students and adults started last school year with numerous staff training sessions by a leading national expert in the field.

8. The proliferation of new artificial intelligence tools have already greatly impacted our work and have the potential to have major impacts on our students of all ages. We are on the edge of a new era.

9. In June we commissioned a mural that faces 6^th Ave north to bring beauty to our north-end neighborhood and increase awareness of NDVS/SB tenfold in our home community. Citizen support was overwhelmingly positive and many former students expressed pride and joy.

10. In another creative way to increase awareness about our very important vision services, a number of billboards will appear across the state in communities large and small. Keep an eye out.

My wish for all of us in 2026 is to find our way and may the good in your life outweigh what is hard. Happy New Year!