Stratford approves its academic standards

An hour-long discussion occurs before the vote passes 4-1 in favor

The Stratford Board of Education on Monday voted 4-1 to approve its 202324 academic standards as required by state law.

Jeannie Tichy was the only school board member to vote against the motion. She didn’t know what Stratford School District meant by having the words “equity, diversity and inclusivity” in one of the four new paragraphs at the bottom of the sheet explaining the academic standards.

State law requires school districts in Wisconsin to provide the parents and guardians of all enrolled students with the academic standards in mathematics, science, reading and writing, geography and history that have been adopted by the school board and that will be in effect each school year.

The academic standards previously adopted by the Stratford School Board that will be in effect for the 2023-24 school year include: Wisconsin Common Core Standards for English/Language Arts, and Math K-12, Next Generation Science Standards for K-12, Wisconsin Standards for Social Studies, Wisconsin Physical Education/ Health Standards, Wisconsin Standards for Music and Art and Design and National Core Arts Standards for Music and Visual Arts.

The school district’s policy and standard committee, which is comprised of school board members Chris Dickinson and Tyler Skaya, met on Friday afternoon to review and discuss the 2023-24 academic standards. The committee decided to add the following four paragraphs to the bottom of this school year’s academic standards sheet: “The Stratford School District is committed to students, community and excellence and supports an educational philosophy that expects high levels of achievement for all students, so they become self-reliant, self-disciplined, well-educated and morally responsible, successful citizens.”

“The Stratford School District reserves the right to adopt, reject or modify any standard, especially those that do not fit our mission or philosophy.”

“Consequently, the Stratford School District adopts equity within these standards as it relates to method and process (that is practices directed toward student need) but does not adopt equity as it relates to subject matter, content and outcomes (that is limitations on diversity/inclusivity in all content areas as well as in counseling and social emotional learning and rejecting ‘critical race theory’ ideologies such as white privilege, systemic racism, antiracism, oppression/oppressed and others).”

“Through these modified standards, our students will be properly focused on rigorous, objective fact-based learning which treats all students equally and respectfully and drives each student to high achievement and personal development, removing the distractions applied through the ideological lenses of equity-based concepts.”

In other news:

n Dr. Nathan Lehman, Stratford schools superintendent, told the school board he is recommending a 30-cent increase in the mil rate from $7.52 in 2022-23 to $7.82 in 2023-24. He said the school district is able to keep its mil rate low because it still has federal ESSER money left over to use before the September 24th deadline. Lehman said the school district might need to raise its mil rate higher in fall when it discovers how much money it’ll be paying in private school vouchers.

n Stratford School District will raise the amount of pay referees get paid for each game in the middle school, JV and JV-2 levels to remain competitive with the other Marawood Conference schools because Lehman said it’s becoming increasingly tougher to find referees for games in the lower grades.

n The school district has hired Lauren Dillinger as the new art teacher and Allison Kunhart as the new choir teacher to replace Elizabeth Dahlby who recently resigned.

Lauren Lucious, who was hired in June as the school district’s new business manager to replace Rod Huther who is retiring, attended Monday’s school board meeting. In June, the school district also hired Jackie Rosenbus for the new FFA job after Becky Wirkus’ resignation and the school district hired Alexis Hofmann as the new school psychologist. Brooke Bohman was hired in June as a full-time custodian.

n Stratford School District will offer a new Dungeons and Dragons Club this school year. The club advisers are Scott Bauman and Nikki Skroch.

n The school board voted unanimously to allow the school district to form a partnership with another area school district to contract with Health in Motion to provide an athletic trainer for school sporting events this year, contingent on the school district not hearing back from Aspirus and Bone & Joint before football season begins.

Stratford School District would pay $20,000 and the other school district in the partnership would pay the other $20,000 for an athletic trainer, just like the agreement Athens and Colby made with Health in Motion.

Lehman said he spoke to Cari Guden, Edgar schools superintendent, about Edgar not contracting with an athletic trainer. He said Guden told him that Edgar relies on its parents who are doctors in the crowd at games to voluntarily provide care for injured student athletes on the field.

Stratford School Board member Dustin Skaya felt having an athletic trainer was necessary not only to provide care for injured student athletes during games, but to also provide diagnostic care before the games like taping up a student athlete’s sprained ankle.

n The school board agreed with Lehman’s recommendation of option number two of providing people who want to attend athletic events the ability to use their debit or credit card to buy tickets on the GoFan app on their cell phones, or pay cash at the door for a ticket. He said tickets will increase by $1 from $3 to $4 for regular-season sporting events this year. GoFan will receive $1 for each ticket it sells on its phone app.

Lehman said each school district superintendent will vote on an option for selling tickets after discussing the options with their school boards. He spoke to Mark Lacke, commissioner of the Valley and Marawood Conferences, who told him the Valley Conference strictly requires people to buy tickets on the GoFan app and no longer takes cash at the door of sporting events.

n Stratford School District will hold its annual meeting and budget hearing at 6 p.m. on Monday, July 24, in the high school commons. The Stratford Board of Education will hold its next regular board meeting at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, August 16.

The school board has been livestreaming its regular board meetings since COVID. Monday night was the first time the school board meeting was live streamed on YouTube so that the school board can monitor the number of people watching their meetings to decide in the future if it should continue live streaming the meetings. School District resident Travis Skroch advocated at the school board’s June meeting for it to keep live-streaming the meetings in the future.

People can access future school board meetings on YouTube by going to the Stratford School District website and clicking on Menu/Live Feed to find the link to watch the meeting.

Dr. Nathan Lehman