program transition all at once ….

program transition all at once throughout all levels, however, there is a lack of games available for the middle school level so that may make the overall transition not as clean as he’d like it to be. Campbell also said that they don’t have the roster to support a 11-man team.

Yanko said that he thought it’d be easier to find 8-man teams to play compared to 11-man teams. “Without being in the conference, it’s going to be a challenge to find teams to play an 8-man schedule, so making that transition isn’t as easy as it seems,” said Yanko. The district administrator, Rick Cardey, explained that their next step would be to see what options there are for scheduling so possibilities for the 2022 season can be presented to the board at September’s meeting. “Ultimately, the deadline and goal for where we need to be is by October of 2022, we have to send in to the WIAA [Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association] ‘are we going to be 8-man football,” said Cardey.

Cardey believes that 8-man is going to be the future of the Rib Lake football program. After that, the next step would be to either dissolve or renew the co-op Rib Lake currently has with Prentice. The board approved to officially begin the transition from an 11-man to an 8-man football program.

A major portion of the meeting’s agenda included a variety of end of year and annual reports, including the special education, seclusion and restraint reports, presented by Jon Dallmann, the elementary principal. Dallmann also updated the board on where the students’ expected growth in academic subjects is at compared to their five-year goal for Achievement Gap Reduction (AGR) end of year report. Dallmann said that the next five-year plan’s goal is to have 80% of students be at or above the 50 percentile.

Aimee Blomberg, the Title I Coordinator, gave the board an annual report on Title I. She explained that because the elementary school is a school-wide Title I school, the federal funding they received was able to provide support for every student and not just ones that required targeted intervention.

Blomberg presented a variety of data to the board, including the results of the reading and math assessment screenings students take three times a year. Majority of the grade levels met the targeted numbers while others fell short. “Last year, with COVID, we lost a lot of time,” said Dallmann. “We lost a lot of core instructional time with students, so our numbers are a little bit lower because of that.”

The Rib Lake school nurse, Judy Le-Master, also attended the meeting to give the board the annual Nursing Services report. “There was a real inconsistency in kids being able to come to school because of [COVID],” said LeMaster. She stated that there were a total of 36 positive COVID cases throughout the school year, but she explained that their numbers were remarkable compared to other schools.

This was the second year in which the SOS suicide prevention program was implemented at the Rib Lake schools. “The best thing about this program is that it gave the opportunity this year to talk to the kids about ‘tell us how COVID has impacted you,’” said LeMaster. “There was a lot of mental health issues that came up as a result of those discussions.”

Rib Lake’s medical advisor, Dr. Susan Frazier, retired and was replaced by Dr. Lonette Valentine, a pediatrician. Le-Master said that the school district is in the process of getting a new school nurse. LeMaster went over Rib Lake’s Wellness Policy Triennial Assessment Report Card, a policy required by the USDA. For the national and state level evaluations, LeMaster said that they were doing well and were on target.

In a meeting with the health department, Cardey said that they believe Rib Lake can open this upcoming school year with very few modifications and restrictions. “We felt that it was important to give kids as normal an experience as possible,” said Cardey. He explained that the plan is very close to a normal school year, just with some modified health support and extra protocols ready to be in place in case a severe situation would occur.

While many of the measures in place to combat COVID would no longer be necessary, the health department did recommend that they keep water fountains disabled again. If that were the case, Cardey suggested purchasing an extra water bottle filler for each school. The board approved to move forward with this initial outline for the 2021-2022 opening plan.

Middle school and high school principal Kirsten Budimlija said that all of the end of the year activities in the middle and high schools went well. “I’m just so impressed by our kids and our staff. Everything from the eighth grade recognition ceremony went awesome [to] our senior graduation went so well outside,” said Budimlija.

Budimlija also brought up the discussion of the daily schedule of the middle and high school for the next year, either staying with the block scheduling they currently have or switch back to a more traditional eight period schedule. At the last staff meeting, they agreed to move towards a modified block schedule where Monday, Thursday, and Friday would have the eight period schedule and Tuesday and Wednesday would have the four period block schedule.

Board member, Jason Dananay, expressed concern about the block scheduling and how it’ll impact students who attend the Rural Virtual Academy (RVA). Cardey and Budimlija ensured that they’d work with RVA students to make schedules line up as best as possible.

The board approved the resignation of technical education teacher, Doug Eichman. They also approved the hiring of Wayne Mann as the varsity girls’ basketball coach and Sheridan Kallander as the junior varsity girls’ basketball coach. Cassie Rudolph was hired as an intervention teacher for elementary school math.

The culture of champions club, led by Michelle Rhodes and Budimlija, have new staff representatives including Joelle Scheithauer for elementary school, Michelle Komarek elementary and middle schools, Becky Hebda for middle school, Leah Hoogland for middle and high schools, and Dan Winkler for high school. Michelle Rhodes and Natalie Winkler are the new senior advisors. Leah Hoogland and Dan Winkler are the prom advisors, and JoAnne Peterson is the new Fitness Center Coordinator.

In other business, the board approved the board’s June bills which amounted to $150,536.63, as well as the preliminary budget for the 2021-2022 school year. Changes to the employee handbook updating extracurriculars and language used was approved. The board also approved to renew their memberships for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards and the Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance. The board approved the establishment of a Fund 73 Trust which involves unfunded liabilities post retirement for staff. They also approved to increase support staff wages by $0.35.

Cardey applied to continue to have meals be free for students for the 20212022 school year and he anticipates that they’ll be approved so there’ll be no need to set meal prices for the students unless need be. The first week of summer school was underway. Cardey said that they have seen a good attendance so far and that they needed to add a second section