Changes will help ease younger students into school

Delaying start for PreK will help provide one-on-one time with teachers, families

The first day of school will be a bit different this year for the Medford school district’s youngest students.

Medford Area Elementary School principal Dan Miller explained that typically Kindergarten and Pre-Kindergarten students would start on the second day of school. This allows older students to get settled in before introducing the younger students to the school routine.

However, this year Miller said they plan to delay the start of the PreK students until Tuesday, September 7. Instead of being in the classroom, the PreK students and their parents will have scheduled one-on-one meetings with their teachers on the first two days of school and during the open house time.

In the past, the district held an open house night where students could come and meet their teachers and drop off supplies. However, last year due to COVID- 19 restrictions those open houses were either not held or were adapted to being more on the one on one model.

“COVID was a bad year, but there were a few morsels of good things,” Miller said, asking the board’s blessing for the more personalized start to the school year for the youngest students. He said the process used last year was embraced by the teachers and families who appreciated more time for personalized conversations.

Miller said the first days of school for younger students often include tears and worry, and he said this change helps to make for a more comfortable start to the school year for all the students.

Stetsonville Elementary School principal SueAnn Schroeder agreed, saying parents loved the opportunity to have one on one time.

School board president Dave Fleegel spoke in favor of the proposed change at the elementary level and noted that with students in each of the buildings it is a miracle for families to be able to get to all the open houses.

With the board go-ahead, students in grades 1 to 9 will start on Wednesday, September 1. Kindergarten students and grades 10, 11 and 12 will start on September 2 and PreK will start on Tuesday, Sept. 7.

With the start of the school year just over a month away, the district is dealing with some last minute staff shuffling as late resignations have been turned in.

In the personnel report, the board accepted resignations from Medford Area Senior High School special education teacher Jennifer Quinnell, 7th grade English teacher Carrie Mullins and 5th grade teacher Margo Swedlund. The district is moving to shift staff and fill vacancies for two of the three positions.

Medford Area Middle School principal Al Leonard proposed not filling Swedlund’s position and reducing the number of sections in fifth grade from seven to six. At seven sections, class sizes would be between 20 and 21 students per class. Going to six sections would raise those class sizes to 23 students per class.

“I think this is a sound move to avoid layoffs in the future,” Leonard said, of the longterm savings from not filling the vacancy and reducing the number of sections.

“I think it is the responsible thing to do,” Leonard said.

Board member Jodi Nuernberger agreed noting the 23 students per section number seemed to be consistent with past years and with other grades. Leonard projected that with the current enrollments they would see section sizes of between 20 and 23 for the next five years.

With one less section of fifth grade, Leonard said they are planning to move a special education teacher into the room for reading and math assistance and reduce the number of teachers who are sharing classrooms.

“We won’t have to teach reading in the home ec room this year,” Leonard said.

Leonard also reported that the construction of the new playground equipment at MAMS had been delayed due to equipment not arriving in time. He said the updated plan is for the playground installation to take place beginning next week.

Budget update

Whatever happens with the school district’s budget for 2021-2022 school year, property owners in the district will see a tax break.

Thanks to paying off previous debt, the district will see its projected tax rate drop from $8.33 per $1,000 of equalized value to $6.23 per $1,000 of equalized value. The owner of a home valued at $150,000 would see the school portion of their property tax drop by $315 from $1,249 to $934.

However, with the district facing major longterm needs especially at the high school, district administrator Pat Sullivan suggested it would have been better to keep taxes steady at what people were used to paying and address the needs versus dropping them.

The school board got some good budgetary news with the announcement from Gov. Tony Evers that he would be applying federal COVID-19 relief funds to school budgets in place of additional funding from the state in the biennial budget. The additional funds total between $120 and $130 per student. For Medford School District this would amount to $249,000 in additional aid based on the $120 amount.

This will help close the current $486,000 gap in Medford’s district $32 million budget for the coming school year. District residents will be asked to approve the budget at the school district annual meeting in August. District Finance Director Audra Brooks is working to bring the budget into balance.

Athletic fields

A proposal by a private group to turn district-owned land near MAES into additional soccer and ball fields remains in limbo following a meeting between organizers and school officials.

Sullivan said the Medford Youth Soccer group met with coaches and school staff to discuss what the district needs and how that could be worked into the plans. Some priorities for the district include a road connecting MAES to CTH Q as a way to reduce congestion at the Hwy 64 entrance. In addition, the district wants a portion of the land to remain in crop use for the agriculture department. It was noted that the FFA Alumni recently sold $2,000 worth of first crop hay from the field which will help support the agriculture program. The second crop of hay will be made into small bales and used for animal feed in the school barn.

Sullivan was also more practical about the number of fields the district needed, noting that community field space was great, but that the district did not see major expansion in the school-offered soccer program beyond possibly a freshman level if numbers justified it.

Sullivan said the soccer group brought the changes back to Point of Beginning, the firm helping the group with their designs, and will bring it to an upcoming school board meeting. At that point the district will need to decide if they will give the group permission to go out and start raising funds for the project.

In other athletic complex discussions, board members directed Sullivan to bring back plans for the replacement of the concession building at Raider Field. The initial project had called for replacement of the concession building with the addition of a store and bathrooms. At the time the field work was done at Raider Field, the district ran out of money to complete the concession building hoping to get to it in a future year. With the district ending the 2020-2021 year with a surplus, it was suggested that now would be the time to finish that project and replace the concession stand.

Sullivan explained the district’s new technology education teacher at the high school takes a hands-on approach and in previous districts has done projects with students including building homes in the community. The thought is the students in the building program could provide most if not all of the labor to get a building built which would give them handson experience while saving the district money.

In other business school board members:

_ Held a moment of silence in memory of Julee Klemm and Nicole Buechel district employees who recently died after battles with illness. “Our district is blessed with great staff and we always like to recognize them,” Fleegel said, calling on the board and those present to share in a moment of silence and send their thoughts and wishes to the families.

_ Approved the annual academic standards used in the school district as required under Wisconsin Act 55. The standards in place are the same as in past years without any change or additions to them and follow state standards.

_ Set up a committee of Don Everhard, Nuernberger and Fleegel to look at adding some 360 degree evaluation tools for the board’s evaluation of the district administrator. In these models, the people who report to the administrator, in this case the building principals and members of the administrative team would be asked for their anonymous input on the administrator to provide a more complete picture for the board to do evaluations. Sullivan was supportive of the idea. “I am not opposed to getting feedback from staff about the job I am doing,” he said. Some of the concerns were with the timetable of actually having it occur. Deml noted the board had sought to do quarterly evaluations of the administrator but was only doing it twice this year because of time. More frequent evaluations are seen as a way to give a more accurate picture of what is going on. Everhard noted that most evaluations are based on what someone did the previous 30 days because before that time people can’t remember what happened. Fleegel emphasized that the evaluation tool discussion and process is not about Sullivan but about how any evaluation of a district administrator should take place regardless of who holds the position.