Cadott School Board; It’s not what we want, it’s what we need

Luke Schilts, CESA 10 (left), talked about a survey on facility planning that will be mailed out to the Cadott community, during a school board meeting Oct. 9. The survey asks the public which projects they support, moving forward with a referendum to fund the improvements. Photo by Ginna Young

By Ginna Young

What is needed at the Cadott High School? That’s what a Facility Advisory Committee (FAC) determined at the end of September, along with public input.

The results of that meeting were shared Oct. 9, by Luke Schilts, CESA 10, to the board of education. It was agreed by staff and the FAC, that a safe, secure entryway and tech ed department were well-supported.

“We’re not deciding where the best location is for that office at this point, right now, we’re just deciding yes, a secure office is the direction we want to go,” said Schilts.

Currently, when someone is buzzed in at the high school, they have to continue on into the building, turn down the hall and enter the office. Most facilities have a vestibule by the office, so any visitors are screened for the reason for their visit.

Schilts pointed out that most times, 90 percent of those coming into the office, are simply dropping something off and a vestibule would make sense.

Also discussed, was having a community center and fitness gym, as well as expanding the kitchen and commons, meaning the softball field may need to be relocated. It was also brought up that a daycare could be part of the new facility.

“To build the gym, we need community support, we cannot do that on our own,” said board president Cory LaNou.

If the public decided on a daycare, it would cover its own cost by the fees charged for watching children, while a community center can be rented out, along with gym memberships.

“Those spaces would bring in revenues,” said district administrator Option 1 on the survey that will be mailed to all district residents, is to construct a secure entrance and expand the tech ed department, by creating a flexible learning space for an auto lab and expansion of the ag classrooms/lab.

Option 2 would focus on building a community center and gym, along with the scope of work from Option 1. Option 3 would create a daycare, as well as the projects from Option 2.

Once the survey goes out, the district will have another FAC meeting to review, then come to the board with a recommendation on which way to go to the taxpayers for referendum in the spring. While the numbers are not available yet, as an example, the estimated cost of Option 1 is $11.2 million, which means on a $100,000 house, would be about $78 a year in increase to the individual’s taxes.

“The No. 1 thing that it boils down to, is a lot of these people’s tax impacts,” said Schilts.

While work is in progress on the high school building, there’s also work done on students’ education and making the experience as positive as possible. Middle/high school principal Nathan Steinmetz said staff has done a lot of work in previous years on the essential learning standards, but there is more to come.

“We have to do some cleaning up with it,” he said.

They’re also looking at what’s working and what isn’t, in XLT and study hall. The staff has discovered the kids have a lot of down time, so they’re looking at phasing out study halls.

The plus side to that, is we can offer more classes and some different classes moving forward,” said Steinmetz.

It also gives the students more opportunity during seminar and XLT.

Steinmetz also reported that he meets with students on the “D” and “F” list, meeting on a weekly basis and talking about why the grade is the way it is, such as missing assignments or if they don’t understand the material. “The way I look at it is, if they get one D or an F, the teachers are taking care of it,” said Steinmetz. “If they have two or more, that’s when I step in.”

Behavior numbers are also looked at as high in the senior high, but most are truancy, with kids late to school or late to class. One area that makes kids truant, Steinmetz found, is that coming from the lunch period to sixth and fifth hours, there are too many kids to funnel in the halls/stairwells and they are arriving late to class.

The staff is working on solutions to make it better, but Steinmetz said there are a lot of other infractions that usually end up being poor language choices.

He also talked about how their reading intervention is going and says Cadott is the only high school in their CESA area, that offers that. LaNou mentioned that it’s not just a Cadott problem of low high school reading levels, but is a nationwide problem.

“We’ll see how it goes,” said Steinmetz. “We’re more or less piloting this.”

At the elementary, the staff has taken the Wisconsin Academic Standards and hit the ground running, redrafting the ELA essential learning, which helps guide interventions.

“We’ll actually break those standards apart into teachable targets,” said elementary principal Brad Rogers.

Rogers said there have been some disciplines taking place, such as behaviors on the bus and a student who was using unacceptable language. Rod Tegels, board member, asked what the district’s role is in disciplining the students when something happens in school.

Spaeth said Kobussen manages the bus time, but lets the administrators know if the problem continues or continues on in school time.

During his report, Rogers also said with the school learning outcome, that the goal was to increase reading on the report card, but there no specifics at this time.

“I can just tell you that we did meet that goal,” he said.

The dress code policy is also being looked at in the high school and Steinmetz is going to put together a group of kids to review the code. In reaching out to see what other schools have in place, the policies seem to be one-sided and only addressing female students.

“We want to look at that just to make sure it’s fair to all genders and also how we handle that,” said Spaeth.

In the business portion of the meeting, members agreed to raise support staff substitution pay rates, because when the regular employees are absent, it’s becoming hard to fill the positions. This puts a burden on rest of the staff or the tasks don’t get done, so the board approved the rate to rise from $17.50 to $20.22.

“I think that’s something we got to explore,” said Spaeth.

The board also approved the resignation of Rhonda Pederson, high school administrative assistant, and Kevin Schroeder, maintenance.

I appreciate all the district has done for me, wrote Pederson.