This is the third report in the CVPost’s series of interviews with school superintendents in six Chippewa Valley public school districts. These reports are intended to provide overviews of the six districts to help community members understand and compare their values, strengths and achievements as well as the challenges that each one faces.
We hope this series will help make our readers more aware of school district goals and operations, and will increase their understanding of how these six districts contribute to the quality of life in their communities and in the Chippewa Valley as a whole. You can find the first two reports in this series, on the Altoona and Menomonie school districts, by clicking on the names of the two districts. For the Introduction to the series as a whole, see http://cvpost.org/13165-2/.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
BASIC INFORMATION: Elk Mound School District
Enrollment: Total, 1,215: 342 in the high school, 347 in the middle school, and 526 in the elementary school
District Vision Statement: Opening Minds for Life’s Journey
Mission Statement: Helping our youth become responsible citizens who seek to contribute to our society in positive ways.
Superintendent: Dr. Ron Walsh, since 2003. Prior Position: middle school and then high school principal in the Elk Mound district for a total of 10 years.
District phone number: 715-879-5066
District website: www.elkmound.k12.wi.us
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
By Michael Hilger, for the Chippewa Valley Post
Geography presents both challenges and opportunities for the Elk Mound Area School District, according to its superintendent, Dr. Ron Walsh.
So does the gap between high and low achieving students, Walsh said in an interview with the Chippewa Valley Post. Two things that help meet those challenges are the district’s stability and an annually updated Belief Statement booklet that is available – in print and online – to everyone in the district, he said.
Walsh was honored in 2014 by the Wisconsin Association of District Administrators as superintendent of the year. He will end a 37-year education career when he retires later this year. He will be succeeded by Eric Wright, currently the Elk Mound middle school principal.
Walsh noted that his district is located between Eau Claire and Menomonie and just off of Interstate 94, which enables it to draw on the resources of both cities plus those available in the Twin Cities. A negative corollary is that local people work all over the area, which in turn results in limited community organizations in the Village of Elk Mound itself, he said.
In addition, Walsh said, the surrounding agricultural community has significantly diminished since he became superintendent 13 years ago, leaving one less identifiable group within the district. Many students and their families still live on small farms, but the students themselves are not involved in farming, he noted.
Walsh said that he and the school board have developed a solid working relationship in his 13 years as superintendent – something that has had a “stabilizing effect” on the district. This “board and administration stability, and their shared core values,” have led to trust in the community and success for the students, Walsh said.
Those core values – community, prosperity, liberty, and Equality – are displayed on the side the high school’s commons outer wall.
These values, embodied in the widely distributed Belief Statement booklet, enable the community and students to know where the district is going. This puts the administration, teachers and students all on the same page in understanding what will be taught and how it will be learned, Walsh said.
In the booklet, Walsh and the board establish and evaluate “goals and action statements” which drive that year’s implementation of the district’s vision and mission statements. The goals for the current year include:
* providing safe, clean and well-maintained school environments and adequate staff and facilities to accommodate changes in student numbers;
* integrating technology into the curriculum;
* promoting mutual respect and dignity for everyone; and
* providing students with educational challenges and encouraging social responsibility.
Walsh said he keeps in contact with the students by informal meetings in the halls and classrooms and over the Internet (all students have their own email addresses) and social media. He and the board also communicate with students and adults through a monthly newsletter sent to every household in the district.
Walsh said the district has developed a program – called SCORE – to close the gap between high and low achieving students in the 9th and 10th grades. The program approaches this challenge by analyzing all available data, including poverty levels and ethnic background, to identify a group of at-risk students who are in danger of failing their courses. This is an ongoing process, he said, with the goal of improving both classroom instruction and student achievement.
SCORE was originally funded by an outside grant, which enabled the district to hire a teacher skilled in helping at-risk students, Walsh said. The program gets those students to appreciate collaboration by having them work together on study skills, test preparation and homework skills.
These collaborative sessions, which also deal with preparing for the ACT test that all students must now take, are held in separate rooms while the higher achieving students work in their regular classrooms.
The SCORE program had great success because “it took a special teacher to teach these at risk kids,” Walsh said. When the program grant was not renewed, district funds were used to continue it because it was successful and so clearly fit the board’s goal of closing the gap, he added.
Unlike most high schools, Elk Mound also offers reading courses to students with below average reading skills.
Walsh said that high achievers in the Elk Mound district have access to AP courses such as Calculus and English, in addition to specialized online courses. He said the district can fund such programs and is in good financial shape because it is slowly but steadily growing. This put more demands on the taxpayers, but they are willing to pay for excellent schools, he said.
Since the village of Elk Mound is small and many of its inhabitants work elsewhere, the detailed monthly newsletter and Walsh’s attendance at athletic events are the main ways he communicates with parents and other district residents, many of whom live outside the village. The board and Walsh also use social media such as Facebook and Twitter, in addition to the district website.
In the March newsletter currently on the website, Walsh notes that the Elk Mound district this year has 145 students enrolling from other districts under the state’s open enrollment plan, and 58 enrolling out to other districts.
Walsh said that extra-curricular and co-curricular activities are crucial for students. He noted that “we try to get every student into something” outside the classroom. This emphasis stems from the goal of providing “enrichment programs and activities to maximize the potential for all students.”
Walsh said he and his board are committed to “maintain enrichment programs we have in place” such as academic decathlon, students supporting students, science Olympiad, Math Counts, and music. The district has added power weight lifting and cross-country track to the athletic program to serve even more students, and allows girls to compete with the boys’ golf team. Given all these opportunities, most students reap the benefits of extracurricular activities, Walsh said.
Walsh said that the district works hard on evaluating all employees every year. He does a detailed evaluation of his administration and the school board evaluates both his performance and their own.
He said his principals use the Department of Public Instruction’s teacher evaluation program that involves several informal and formal visits to each classroom, and subsequent suggestions for improvement. These visits are followed by structured reports that are the basis for face-to-face meetings between teachers and principals.
Walsh said that the school board emphasizes careful training of its members, which is another reason “why things go well” in the district. He noted that he and the school board have been developing a detailed transition plan as he prepares to retire are the end of the current school year.
Michael Hilger is an English professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and a member of the Altoona school board.