RIVER FALLS — Activities Director David Crail presented to the River Falls Board of Education during the December meeting, talking about what the future may have in store for the district.

Crail as well as a pair of students spoke about the fall extra-curricular season, including highlights such as regional championships in soccer and volleyball, individual State appearances, the championship won by the marching band and the school’s musical “The Spongebob Musical.”

Participation in athletics through the high school stood at 311 in the fall, down from 323 in the fall of 2023 and up from 300 in 2022, but overall remaining fairly steady. Winter participation is 181, down from 184 in 2023 and 192 in 2022.

One topic the district may have to deal with in the future is the establishment of name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities for high schoolers. The WIAA is going through a vote that failed a year ago, and if approved this time around, student athletes could be compensated for their talents. Crail voted against the proposal last time around.

“I voted no, I don’t have a problem saying that,” Crail said. “The way that I felt like the policy was written was going to place a lot of burden on our district to make sure that every bit was implemented properly.”

Ultimately, Crail said the WIAA believes if they do not implement the policy, it will be implemented at the state legislature level.

“There would be strong evidence to support that that would be the case because there’s so many other states that already have it,” Crail said. “I think the thought or fear of potential lawsuits by the state not having it is a driving force to say we have to have something.”

The vote takes place at the WIAA annual meeting in April.

Football participation numbers are on the rise in River Falls, with Crail crediting a focus on flag football at the youth level rather than tackle.

“We made a conscious change to go away from tackle and to invest more into the flag football,” Crail said. “Over the course of the last few years in the fall, we’ve had well over 400 kids participating in flag football.”

He mentioned that if kids are playing football at the youth level and enjoying it, they are more likely to continue. When they are being hit at a younger age, many opt to stop playing all together.

Crail said there were 74 high school students involved in football eight years ago, a number that is up to 129.

With the high numbers, he said the district is “really close” to adding a varsity reserve team.
“JV, for the most part, you’d like to be able to have that program be developmental,” Crail said. “That’s going to leave out some of your seniors that don’t necessarily play. It might leave out some of your juniors and sophomores that maybe aren’t as skilled.”

He said they do not want people playing games multiple times a week, so they need to get to a level where there are enough linemen to go around.

DPI Report Card

The school district received a four-star rating on the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) report card, scoring a 71.1 for 2023-24. The four-star rating means River Falls exceeds expectations through a combination of categories of achievement, growth, target groups and on-track graduation. The on-track graduation score was the highest at 85.7, falling into the five-star rating with a significantly exceeds expectations tag. The category accounts for chronic absenteeism, graduation, third grade English language arts scores and eighth grade math scores. Notably, the scores are not percentiles, rather based on the area scores within each.

The school scored 71.6 in achievement, 67.0 in growth and 58.6 in target group outcomes. Target group outcomes looks at the bottom 25% of students to evaluate their growth, achievement, graduation and absenteeism.

“The report card can be complicated, and it’s not because we want to make it complicated, it’s because the way that DPI rolls out this data,” Alan Tuchtenhagen said.

River Falls fell between Hudson’s 72.9 score and New Richmond’s 67.5 score when compared to neighboring communities.

Cell Phone Policy

The board heard an update on cell phone policies at the high school, Renaissance Charter Academy and Meyer Middle School.

At the high school, phones and other technology are expected to be out of sight and turned off during class time. The first offense in the event of a violation is a warning, followed by a confiscation, referral and call home on the second offense, a referral and detention on the third offense and dropping their phone off at the office during school on the fourth offense.

Renaissance is expecting students to keep phones in their lockers which can only be used during breaks from instruction. Their system is a warning first, phone in the office for five days on second offense, phone in the office for the rest of the term on third offense and additional violations resulting in in-school suspension.

At Meyer, students are expected to keep their phones in the locker for the entirety of the school day. First offense is a warning, second is confiscation until the end of the day, third is confiscation and the parent needs to pick up the student’s phone from the office and fourth results in students turning their phone into the office every day.

With a lot of devices adding to the circulation including smart watches and tablets, the school is treating them all like smart phones. Superintendent David Bell said they want to leave the device decisions up to parents, focusing on enforcement of their policies either way.

“Providing information for parents to make informed decisions, but then letting parents make parent decisions and then being very consistent with what our policies are,” Bell said.

Other business

• Student Services Director Mark Inouye presented the special education Wildly Important Goal for 2024-25, which is “80% of Special Education Students will show above average growth (Student Growth Percentile of > 65) on universal Reading screeners from Fall to Spring.”
• Board President Stacy Johnson Myers opened the meeting by discussing the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison. “We’re thinking about our neighbors in that community as well as the families, the faculty and staff of Abundant Life School. While we don’t know all of the details, we do know that people are mourning and that there is no place for violence in schools,” Johnson Myers said.
• The school’s FFA students and alumni brought each of the board members a box of fruit for their support of the program.
• Continued with the readings of policies as part of their policy review that has been ongoing in recent months.
• Voted to provide Monica LaVold with direction for voting at the Wisconsin Association of School Boards Delegate Assembly in January.