ELLSWORTH — The Ellsworth School Board heard updates from leaders of all three of the district’s schools, with some success stories and other goals shining a light on areas to improve.

For the middle school, those goals were to demonstrate 5% growth in proficiency of English Language Arts scores on the Wisconsin Forward Exam and to close the achievement gap between special education and non-special education students by 3% in each subject by March 2025.

“Using regular assessment of student progress and being able to respond to that by either reteaching misconceptions or filling in gaps in knowledge,” Middle School Principal Olin Morrison said. “If they’ve already demonstrated that they’re meeting proficiency, how do we now push them to even higher levels?”

The school saw a 5.27% increase in ELA proficiency scores in sixth grade, 1.96% in seventh and 4.52% in eighth. Special education achievement gaps were decreased by 1.26% in sixth grade math and 4.73% in sixth grade ELA, increased by 1.48% in seventh grade math and 3.84% in seventh grade ELA and decreased by 4.25% in eighth grade math and increased by 0.81% in eighth grade ELA.

“When it comes to our co-teaching, we’ve really tried to step it up,” Morrison said. “In the past what we’ve found is we’ve really had two adults in the classroom. We’ve had a support staff or a special education teacher assisting in different ways. What we’re trying to learn is how do we leverage that to really maximize student growth in those classrooms.”

Morrison said co-teaching allows the school to support everyone in the classroom, regardless of their learning needs.

“When you have two adults in there, one being the special education teacher who is kind of our differentiation expert, and the other being the regular teacher who is our instructional expert,” Morrison said. “If we can combine those two different lenses to support all learners within that classroom, that’s what we’re after.”

The high school had goals of increasing math and reading ACT College Readiness scores by 3% each and having unexcused absence and tardy rates below 3%. The ACT scoring isn’t official yet, but Principal Oran Nehls said every department has taken on the challenge of improving the reading and math scores in their own way. As for attendance, unexcused absence rates were 0.58% in Q1, 0.87% in Q2 and 1.6% in Q3. Unexcused tardies were 0.3% all three quarters.

“I’m going to give [Assistant Principal Rob] Heller a lot of credit because since he’s been on board our attendance data has remarkably, I’m going to use the word improved,” Nehls said.

Nehls plans to set the future attendance goals even higher. The high school goals work off of each other, Nehls said.

“When it comes to improving reading and math and academics, you can only do it if there’s butts in the seats,” Nehls said.

The elementary school aimed to decrease behavior calls and bottom lines (behavior including physical aggression and bullying) by 5% each as well as reach 80% fact fluency in math and grade-level reading ability.

As of April 2, the school has had 213 behavior calls, down from 328 a year ago. On the flip side, bottom lines have passed last year’s full year total, coming in at 557 compared to last year’s 531.

They have noticed an uptick in inappropriate and violent language. Elementary Principal Mary Zimmerman said a lot of these children are more exposed to the language now than ever before due to movies, television and video games. Administrators mentioned they do not believe COVID is playing as big of a role as technology in this, and they have found that they are teaching young children to play because they are so used to the device dependence.

“The challenges sitting in front of us are not like challenges five years ago,” Principal Travis Logslett said. “The amount of executive functioning that kids do not have at 5 and 6 years old is shocking. They don’t know how to function in school.”

The Baldwin-Woodville School District, the most comparable in size in the area to Ellsworth’s Elementary School, is experiencing a similar phenomenon in bottom line statistics.

As for the academic goals, they reached the math goal in first, second and fourth grades, missing out in kindergarten and narrowly in third grade.

“After our state report card came out, I did have schools calling us, asking about our math stuff and how we were able to show so much growth,” Logslett said.

The reading goal is set “intentionally” high, but they are seeing growth. Fifth grade is the lone grade without 50% of students at or above benchmark, coming in at 47% as of winter testing.

Acknowledgements

Choir members Bailey Oleson and Sophia Place made the state Treble Choir and Thomas Helseth made the state orchestra as a trumpet player. The three auditioned against many of the state’s best to make the team and were acknowledged by the board.

The band and choir took a trip to New York City over spring break, experiencing things like the top of the Rockefeller Plaza, Times Square, an appearance on the Today Show, the 9/11 Museum, multiple musicals and much more.

The Pierce-St. Croix Officials Association honored the high school with the hospitality award for assistance, hospitality, facilities and personnel toward officials to make them feel welcome. The school was the lone school to receive the award this year.

Board Vice President Susan Beck was honored after serving on the school board for 12 years.

Other business

• The board went over the election results, with Julie Lundstrom and Michael Petersen retaining their seats. With Beck stepping away after 12 years on the board, Charlie Kummer took her place as the lone candidate to run.
• Superintendent Brian Nadeau said the middle school and high school may move the start time of the school day from 8:05 up to 8:00 a.m. He said the five minutes adds 14 hours of instructional time over the course of the year, amounting to about two days. These two days then give the district increased flexibility with snow cancellations and other needs. Nadeau said he spoke with the transportation director, and it will be no problem for the buses.
• Approved a list of projects that needed to be decided on before the full list comes to the table at a future meeting because of timeliness. The total of approved projects was $189,158.29, including scoreboards at the Hager City Brown’s Complex, HVAC maintenance, a new truck, a V-plow and a Piety Street assessment from the village.
• Approved $36,000 toward ETS Performance, a business that works with the school to train strength and speed as well as mental traits for athletics. Athletic Director Kevin Haglund and ETS representatives showed off the improvement participating athletes showed during 2023-24, and the district decided to renew the program. They do summer programs, offseason programs and work with athletes during their sports seasons as well. The total cost for ETS on the year is $60,000, with booster clubs taking on $24,000. Last year the overall cost was $60,000 as well, but a grant that is no longer available allowed the district to take on $17,500 in costs.
• Approved the removal of a nondiscrimination policy and the reinstatement of a former policy. The board dealt with a change in the policy months ago with a change in federal administration, but they got the go ahead to return to their former policy.
• Approved job descriptions for dean of students, director of student services, English learner coordinator and behavior specialist. They also made a change to move an alternate education support staff job to a full-time teaching role. After a closed session, the board approved a motion for a notice of nonrenewal due to budgetary reasons.

Personnel

The board approved the following personnel changes:

Hires: Kjrsten Faaren, speech-language pathologist; Roxana Hewitt, English language support staff; Paul Manosky, high school tech ed teacher; Anita Peterson, elementary long term sub teacher.

Resignations: Aaron Campbell, assistant mechanic; Katie Bennett Deiss, high school volleyball assistant coach and elementary behavior specialist; Amanda Harris, elementary food service staff; Carissa Johnson, elementary speech-language pathologist; Mara Kenall, elementary special education case manager; Ryan Paul, district wide substitute teacher.
Retirements: Julie Winegar, high school tech ed teacher.

Extra/Co-Curriculars: Laura Arneson, high school assistant volleyball coach; Brad Baker, JV boys tennis coach; Logan Benson, boys assistant golf coach; Lucas Kemmerer, volunteer baseball assistant coach; Emily Stiemann, high school head volleyball coach; Haylee Yaeger, middle school assistant track coach; Ashley Zierl, middle school assistant track coach.

Transfers: Katie Acker, from health aide/teaching assistant to high school administrative assistant; Kendyl Horn, from eighth grade assistant volleyball coach to eighth grade head volleyball coach; Kayla Zimmer from elementary counselor to elementary behavior specialist.