“Strong Schools Make Strong Communities” – how well does this frequently used quote apply to the role that Chippewa Valley school districts play in their communities?
In an effort to explore that question, the Chippewa Valley Post has interviewed the superintendents in six area public school districts. The results of those conversations will be published periodically, beginning with the following report on the Altoona district. Reports on the school districts in Chippewa Falls, Eau Claire, Elk Mound, Fall Creek and Menomonie will follow.
Although school boards, staffs and students are all crucial to school successes, we chose to provide a look at each district “through the eyes of the superintendents,” since they are the primary leaders and therefore are responsible for the overall performance of their districts.
This series of interviews is not an in-depth look at any of the school districts. Rather, it is an overview that we hope will help community members understand the values, strengths and achievements of their own school district as well as the challenges that it faces, and relate these to other Chippewa Valley districts.
One challenge faced by all six districts is that the population of the Chippewa Valley is steadily becoming more culturally diverse. This reality challenges the public schools, which must accept any student who walks through their doors and must make sure to address the needs of diverse populations. This, along with new mandates from the state and federal governments, requires school districts to design new teaching methods that will help all students learn to the maximum level of their abilities.
To begin to get at how the public schools are addressing these and other challenges, we posed a series of basic questions to each superintendent. These included how districts are implementing their vision and mission and how they deal with any achievement gaps that may exist.
Among the other areas covered in these interviews were financial challenges, communication efforts and evaluation procedures.
Michael Hilger conducted most of the interviews in this series and was joined, in some cases, by David Gordon, CVPost board chair and associate editor. Hilger, an English professor emeritus at UW-Eau Claire, is a member of the Altoona school board. Because of his inevitable conflict of interest in reporting on that district, the interview with Altoona School Superintendent Dr. Connie Biedron was conducted and reported by Gordon, with input from Hilger.
This report begins our “Through the Eyes of the Superintendents” series. We hope it will help our readers come to a better awareness of school district operations and goals, and how these contribute to the quality of life in each community and in the Chippewa Valley as a whole.
BASIC INFORMATION: Altoona School District
Enrollment: about 1,600 – about 430 in the high school, 320 sixth through eighth graders in middle school, 245 fourth and fifth graders in the intermediate school and just under 600 students in Pedersen Elementary School.
District Vision: “The vision of the Altoona School District, in partnership with our students, their families, and our community, is to build a foundation for life-long learning and the emotional well-being of our students. We are dedicated to offering large school opportunities with a small school approach.”
Superintendent: Dr. Connie Biedron, since 2012. Prior Position: 13 years as an elementary school principal (Blair-Taylor School District)
District phone number: 715-839-6032
District website: www.altoona.k12.wi.us
By David Gordon, for the Chippewa Valley Post
Maintaining “a small school approach” while “offering large school opportunities” is one reason the Altoona School District enrolled some 220 students this year under the statewide open enrollment option, according to its superintendent, Dr. Connie Biedron.
During an interview with the Chippewa Valley Post, Biedron said this was nearly 100 more than the number of students who transferred out to other districts. Parents of students who transfer in know their children won’t get lost in the system, she said.
Biedron added that the Altoona elementary school’s good reputation in the community and the two-year-old Intermediate (4th and 5th grade) school also are drawing cards. So are such opportunities as STEM (a focus on science, technology, engineering, and math), robotics and coding, which all teach important 21st century skills.
Biedron acknowledged that the district also faces problems and challenges. Foremost among those, she said, is “closing the gap” between high achieving students and those at the lower end of the achievement spectrum, an issue common to most public school districts.
Altoona is working hard at this but isn’t doing as well as it needs to, she said. The schools do well with high achieving students, she noted, and “their overall scores look good because we’ve got a lot of high performing students.” However, this masks the need to find ways to “appeal to those students we don’t appeal to now,” she added.
“For those students who can’t make it in school no matter the reason,” Biedron wondered whether an alternate program work for them. Such a program would likely be located physically outside of the high school, and could well operate on a different schedule than the rest of the district, she said.
(Since the interview, the School Board has approved this approach in concept, with the details still to be worked out.)
Biedron said that her “personal vision (for the district) is high levels of learning for all our students,” and noted specific programs that she considers to be district strengths:
- The “gifted and talented program” in which some 10% of the district’s students are enrolled, based on test scores, self-recommendations and recommendations from parents and teachers. Students in this program apply problem-solving and project learning approaches as they create an individualized curriculum.
- Mixed classrooms in the Intermediate school, where fifth graders serve as mentors to fourth grade students . . . a concept that may be expanded to the middle school in the future.
- The district’s robotics program and team, which draw participation from many grade levels and attract students from outside the district. (Biedron noted that Eau Claire has two robotics programs to Altoona’s one, but they are run outside of the schools, which is something she wants to avoid so there is no question that participation is open to all students.)
- The fact that almost no fees are charged for participation in athletics and other co-curricular activities, though students must provide specialized equipment for sports such as hockey and their own costumes for stage productions.
- The so-called “genius hour” which is actually two hours on Friday when students in 6th grade choose a specific topic that’s of interest to them and use computers to work on it.
“We’re at a big paradigm shift in education. Education used to be more for the adults who were doing the teaching instead of the students who were learning. And I think we need to look at shifting things to be more directed toward what our students need instead of how we want things to be or what’s easier for us,” she said.
Biedron said she is interested in “encouraging creativity in students, and flexibility” and to make sure they are not “afraid of being wrong.” She added that this would be “a big shift in how we do school.”
Biedron observed that students have too often “been programmed into getting into college” and therefore are interested in learning how “to take a test, not necessarily (learning) how to think.” She criticized approaches which curtail creativity and thinking and encourage students merely “to regurgitate the information.”
She said the district’s teachers cover a wide age range, with “quite a few new, younger teachers” who may be “more willing to try different things, let kids be kids, be creative (and) be flexible, especially when they see it’s worked someplace else.”
A District of “the perfect size”
Biedron said the district is the perfect size – about 1,600 students, without too much bureaucracy and with projected enrollment increases between 2% to 5% a year – “slow and steady growth so we can manage it.” (Biedron, though, thinks the growth will be a bit faster than that because the new school building will be attractive to families with young children.)
Altoona’s primary grades (kindergarten through 3rd grade) will move into a new building next fall, adding about 83,000 square feet to the district’s available space, an addition made possible by passage of a referendum in 2014, for which Biedron campaigned hard.
Biedron referred to the district’s vision and mission statements and noted that the schools’ goal is to educate the whole child: basic academic material for an informed mind and individual and group exercises for healthy emotions and behavior. Teachers spend a considerable amount of time on the emotional and behavioral issues. For some students, “we’re really working on all social skills with them,” not just academics, she said.
Among the district’s biggest challenges is bullying. The guidance counselors have worked on this problem extensively, and, though it is hard to control, their intervention with individual students and parents has helped to mitigate the problem, Biedron said.
Another way the district deals with these problems is by having an Altoona police officer on campus. This person not only helps keep the schools safe, but also works with students, parents, and the staff on solving behavioral problems.
The Altoona district also helps lower achieving students and those who plan on a career after high school with exercises in teamwork and mentoring, as well as internships with local companies. Biedron noted that individualized help is also available in a time set aside each day for this purpose.
Other Points
In no particular order of importance, the conversation also covered the following points:
– In kindergarten through 8th grade low achieving students are not held back and, in high school, students advance according to the number of credits they have achieved, Biedron said.
– All students have the opportunity to study world languages. Spanish is offered in grades K-5, and courses in world languages give students in grades four through eight exposure to Spanish, French, German, Latin, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. Students who want to study these languages further can follow up with online courses.
– The district offers 11 advanced placement (AP) courses and others are available to students online.
– The new 4th and 5th grade Intermediate School strives to foster ownership, sharing and success in all the core subjects by a project learning approach. Inspired by Google’s “Genius Hour,” the students give individual presentations on their projects, which have ranged from home remodeling to crime solving.
Biedron said she relates to students through the Student Council, with regular question and answer visits to all the schools and by simply spending time in the hallways interacting with students. She added that she tries to communicate with the community through regular sessions at the Altoona Family Restaurant, and through interviews on radio station WAYY. The district also uses social media and an online and print newsletter.
She commented that the superintendent’s job is very demanding but also satisfying. What she relishes most about it, she said, is the opportunity to build systems that will facilitate continuous improvement for future Altoona students. Looking to the future, Biedron noted that the district is going to survey both the staff and the community to determine “their perception of how we’re doing . . . and use that as we move forward.”
Note: the second story in this series, on the Menomonie area school district, can be found at http://cvpost.org/13054-2/.