The Mid-Prairie School Board approved changes to its strength and conditioning program for student-athletes, indicating that this was a first step in a continuing effort to improve the athletic program.

The changes passed at a special meeting Monday are expansions of the district’s current contract with Performance Therapies, a physical therapy and athletic training company based out of Cedar Rapids that has a location in Kalona. The approved changes for the 2025-26 school year doubled the on-site hours for Performance staff from four to eight hours per week, including classroom visits for students in the high school’s weightlifting class, expanded speed camps, and called for further training for the district’s coaches and the addition of strength workouts at the middle school level. 

The changes increase the cost of the district’s strength and conditioning program from $6,144 to $10,888 for the upcoming school year.

In the 2026-27 school year, the approved changes also call for six assistant weight lifting coaches, one in the fall, winter and spring, and three in the summer.

The changes passed 4-1, with Board President Jake Snider being the lone dissenting vote, “I don’t think we moved the needle very far, and [there’s no] guarantee that we’re going to keep trying to improve and look at some of the questions that never got answered.”

Other board members agreed with Snider that the changes shouldn’t be the end of the board’s action with the program, but that they didn’t have time to implement any further changes prior to the upcoming school year and that this would be a first step.

Snider voiced his concern to District Activities Director Pete Cavanaugh, “If we say you’re going to go to Performance and be like ‘Hey, will you change these programs,’ based on how this interaction is going, in all honesty, I don’t have a lot of faith that’s going to happen. I don’t feel like you see it the way the community does or in the way parents have spoke.”

Cavanaugh explained, “All I can do is act in good faith, and whatever we do, it’s like you talked about before, there’s going to be people that want more or want different, right? No matter what we do, it’s somewhat of a losing battle.”

The changes went into effect immediately. The board waived its general policy of seeing action items twice before voting in order to give the district and Performance time to implement the changes.