ELLSWORTH — The Ellsworth School Board heard the first reading of middle school and high school academic scheduling for the 2026-27 school year in the instance that the April referendum is not approved during the March 9 meeting.

At the high school, the longtime block schedule with four longer class periods per day would be changed to seven-period days. The estimated savings would be $175,000, as block scheduling usually had teachers instructing students for three out of four blocks.

“This shift away from block [scheduling] is complicated and it’s a big shift, not only for the students, but for the staff,” High School Principal Marcy Burch said. “The block schedule is technically the most expensive schedule to run because a teacher is working three out of four blocks or essentially teaching 75% of the day. Any shift away from that model then gets more teaching time.”

About 20% of the high school’s courses have 15 or fewer students enrolled in them. Burch said a change to a new scheduling system could cost a few elective course offerings, but classes with low enrollment would creep closer to the benchmark.

Burch said this school schedule change would be something the school looks to regardless of the referendum result, but a passed referendum would give them a bit more time to hash things out for a smooth landing rather than the new schedule taking effect in the coming school year.

“We’d prefer to have some time to make this change. We would hope very much that the referendum will pass and we have time to do this in a purposeful and mindful way,” Burch said.

Burch said a major benefit of the new schedule could show through in ACT and state benchmark testing, as students will be in core classes like math and English throughout the year rather than completing core courses in a quarter or semester. Staying in the classes all year can be beneficial for maintaining the things taught from the beginning of the school year to the end of it.

Current excel times would be swapped for a study hall period for each student that would allow them to complete work assigned in class.

The changes would also come with graduation requirement adjustments due to the four course and seven period schedules not lining up perfectly. The 27-credit graduation requirement would be decreased to 24, with 2.5 credits of the decrease stemming from elective loss down to 8.0 necessary credits and 0.5 being cut from the social studies requirement which would land at 3.0 credits. Credits would be slightly adjusted for students currently in high school depending on the grade level to balance the weight of the four-period and seven-period schedules.

“The only reason that is a different number is because we would be changing the scheduling model,” Burch said. “We’re not asking our students to do less or take less credits, it’s just that their time in the model would be different.”

The request for a half credit decrease in social studies requirements was to fall in line with state requirements and fellow conference schools. Assistant Principal Rob Heller said the change will open up student schedules to take on the courses of their choosing, including usage of the new Career and Technical Education spaces added from the previous referendum.

The middle school’s schedule updates would bring $297,000 in savings, moving from five to four sections and eight to seven class periods per day. In the middle school’s situation, these are changes that would also likely come regardless of referendum approval, but Principal Olin Morrison said the changes would be made through attrition and natural transition rather than through active staff alterations.

“The middle school essentially will need to right-size to a four-section middle school. So, what that means is at any point in our day, every period we divide the student body at a grade level by at minimum five. Eventually, we know the numbers coming up to the middle school will necessitate that we divide by four,” Morrison said. “Elementary has already right-sized at some grade levels to be four-sectioned.”

While Morrison could not yet dive into the specifics over course alterations, he said some course categories would see a reduction in educational time. Going from eight periods to seven would mean decreasing from five core classes to four each day. Period lengths would increase from around 42 minutes to 48 minutes.

“Ultimately, it would mean reduction in instructional minutes in one of the four cores,” Morrison said. “There’s some different possibilities of what that would look like.”

If the referendum is approved, other options like trimesters could also be studied as options, but the change was deemed too drastic to make in a matter of months.

Board Member Michael Petersen said if the staff feels like this change is too large to execute cleanly in a handful of months, he would rather see other cuts for an equivalent savings or choose to do something different with the deficit spending to buy time to effectively make the change.

“There’s a part of this that feels like we really don’t have a choice. We know what the limits are,” Superintendent Brian Nadeau said. “Do we think we can do it? I think we can. Do we feel like we have a lot of choice in the matter? I don’t feel like we do.”

The second reading would be the day after the April election, so the board will know whether the policy needs to be enacted or not.

Policy Review

The board took on a ton of policy review during the March meeting, with three of the largest changes being to the cell phone policy, the child abuse and neglect policy and the leave without pay policy.

The cell phone policy stems from changes to state legislation, but Nadeau said the state could make further changes in the near future. The change prohibits the use of cell phones during instructional time.

Nadeau said the approved policy change takes effect in July, but legislators are already weighing a ban on cell phones from the opening bell to the release bell of school, regardless of whether it is instructional time.

A child abuse and neglect policy had its first reading removed and was approved at the March meeting due to a state policy adoption and is effective immediately.

“If we have to deal with a situation like this, we would have to deal with it with this policy now,” Nadeau said.

Within the policy is an immediate parental notification process following alleged sexual misconduct toward a student from a staff member. In the instance of misconduct during a school day, the school is required to notify parents by 5 p.m. Outside of school hours, the school is required to notify by noon of the next calendar day.

A list of potential conduct violations were included that could be considered mandatory to report. While the vast majority of the list saw no questions, items like giving non-educational gifts to students and going to a student’s home for non-educational purposes saw some questions. Petersen said much of the list leaves gray area, like if a staff member is friends with the parents of a student and is visiting them or a teacher giving students gifts over the holidays.

Nadeau said since the list says misconduct “may” include, not “shall” include, there may be some room for interpretation. He said the policy had to be approved because the state immediately put the policy into law, but he can track down answers to Petersen’s questions.

The board approved a policy update to remove benefits to employees on days of unpaid leave. Reasons mentioned for the change were to back the staff that is present in the building and to save on an estimated $2,500 per year from those benefits. The policy takes effect July 1.

“Any staff member, who uses unpaid days during a fiscal year, shall not receive or accrue any fringe benefits for those days. This section does not apply to FMLA leaves. The employee shall, however, be permitted to remain in the District’s group health insurance plan, at their own expense, for the time required by state and federal law. Employees will be responsible for all fringe benefit costs associated with these leave requests. The employee authorizes the District to make appropriate payroll deduction to cover such expenses as applicable,” the new policy excerpt states.

Public comment

District Bus Driver Randy Brickner spoke to the board backed by multiple fellow district transportation employees, speaking against an insurance decision.

“Let me start out with asking you to reconsider the vote you had last month in your closed session of our insurance,” Brickner said. “Clearly this figure that you’ve got is a matter of who’s doing the math and in what way. First, we were told that you voted on $140,000 savings, the second day after that it was $127,000, then it went to $107,000 savings, now it’s back up to $110,000 savings. We cannot get to that figure. We get to between $68,000 and $70,000.”

Brickner said his supervisor has given a plan to cut out buses and retain insurance, and wanted the transportation team to have the chance to discuss the proposal with the board, as well as go through each others’ numbers to determine where the origin of the difference in calculations is coming from.

While board members cannot directly speak to public comment questions per board policy, members of the board later expressed the sentiment that they would take the item back on in a future closed session.

Other business

• Acknowledged staff member Lynette Winger for using the Heimlich maneuver to save a choking elementary school student, the Middle School Musical “Music Man Junior,” the elementary carnival for raising money to fund school field trips, sophomore wrestler Hunter Bench for competing at Individual State and Petersen for being awarded a Level 1 award from the Wisconsin Association of School Boards for his board membership.
• Went through the audit report, with no major concerns from the auditor.
• Approved election canvassing April 13 by citizens Raynee Farrell and Tracey Hines and Board Member Steven Mark.
• Approved a CESA 11 services contract for the 2026-27 school year.

Personnel

The board approved the following personnel changes:

Hire: Morgan Prigge, speech and language therapist assistant.

Retirements: Karolyn Campbell, high school library media assistant; Karen Klawitter, elementary teaching assistant; Karen Kornmann, high school choir teacher; Connie Roland, elementary teaching assistant; Dan Unser, bus driver; Karen Webster, elementary teaching assistant; Lynette Winger, elementary teaching assistant.

Resignations: Lucas Blodgett, middle school special education teacher and high school assistant track coach; Samuel Elling, boys basketball varsity assistant coach; Kayla Ellis, elementary teaching assistant and PKC staff; Erin Relyea, high school special education teacher; Robin Smith, food service staff.

Extra/Co-Curriculars: Stella Anderson, high school assistant track coach; Darren Georgakas, JV baseball assistant coach; Shane Lange, middle school track coach.