This is the fifth 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 four reports in this series, on the Altoona, Menomonie, Elk Mound and Chippewa Falls school districts, by clicking on the names of the four districts. For the Introduction to the series as a whole, please see http://cvpost.org/13165-2/.
The final report in this series, on the Fall Creek School District, will appear later this summer.
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BASIC INFORMATION: Eau Claire Area School District
Enrollment: Total – 11,182, with 1,696 in Memorial High School, 1,302 in North High School, 939 in Delong Middle School, 574 in Northstar Middle School, 825 in South Middle School, and 4,720 in 13 elementary and charter schools.
Vision of the Eau Claire Area School District: “We challenge minds, build relationships and nurture individual growth to prepare all students for post-secondary success.”
Mission: To inspire and prepare our students to live creative, fulfilling and responsible lives.
District phone number: 715-852-3000
District website: www.ecasd.us/Home
Superintendent: Dr. Mary Ann Hardebeck was an administrator for the Loudon County Public Schools in Ashburn, VA before she became the superintendent of ECASD in 2012.
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By Michael Hilger, for the Chippewa Valley Post
The Eau Claire Area School District, the eighth largest in Wisconsin, is unique in the Chippewa Valley because of its many schools and large enrollment.
It also seeks to be unique in such educational efforts as the “innovation zones” that will be tried for the first time this year at Northstar Middle School. The district’s new slogan, “Where knowledge and inspiration meet to create the future,” also reflects this approach.
Even though the district is large and has a big tax base, the administration has worked hard and made sacrifices to run “a tight financial ship,” according to Dr. Mary Ann Hardebeck, the district’s superintendent since 2012. Despite its tax base, she said, Eau Claire shares the general challenge facing public education – receiving enough support to provide the best education
Since support from the legislature is dwindling, and some of it is moving to independent charter schools, “we all must work hard to convince the Wisconsin governor and legislature in Madison to give stronger support to public schools in our north central area,” Hardebeck said.
“Our children are our most treasured resource,” she added.
To help provide additional resources in the face of reduced state support. the district has taken the difficult steps of freezing teachers’ salaries and charging significant fees for certain extra-curricular activities, she said.
The district has a good relationship with its stakeholders, who appreciate the fact that about 80% of Eau Claire students go on to some form of higher education, Hardebeck said.
Closing the Gap
She noted that the district tries to close the gap between high and low achieving students through early intervention and a strong early education program. Waiting until later in the education process to close that gap is more expensive and makes it more difficult for students to catch up, she said.
The district uses several different methods to decide if students need individual intervention. These include watching their reading progress closely in third grade and carefully monitoring math skills, behavior and attendance in middle school, Hardebeck said.
The district also considers the student’s family situation and seeks their help when this is appropriate, she said. Students who are seriously at risk because of incomplete assignments or excessive absence may be sent to McKinley, an alternate district charter school for students with those problems.
Efforts are underway to create “innovation zones,” Hardebeck said. These will encourage teachers in these buildings to plan new ways of adapting their teaching methods to the various learning styles of different students. Proposals are being developed at several schools, in addition to the Northstar Middle School trial that will start next fall, she added.
Strategic Planning
Hardebeck said the district’s first step in creating and implementing a strategic plan was to contract for outside surveys of parents and staff annually or every other year. The results were used in developing a strategic plan that made clear the lines of communication within the district administration and with teachers.
The strategic plan led to plans for improvement within separate schools, in regard to both curriculum and ways to improve how it’s taught. Principals in the district make formal and informal classroom visits on a regular basis and follow up by meeting with individual teachers to discuss ways they might improve their teaching. She noted that the “power of this evaluation is in this conversation.”
Hardebeck explained that the district communicates with the community in a variety of ways, in line with the board’s goal of strengthening those connections. These include:
- Individual schools send out newsletters and parent handbooks and use social media such as Facebook and Twitter. They also encourage and use parent- teacher conferences.
- The district encourages senior citizens to attend school activities by giving them a pass to all school events. Some seniors also serve as special tutors.
- The district also has a series of forums and a Veterans Day event that are open to the public.
- Recently the district put together a video illustrating how students from the Eau Claire district contributed to many parts of the community. This video appeared on several local TV channels.
Hardebeck said the board has set forth two other specific goals, in addition to strong lines of communication with the community:
- creating “a collaborative, intentional and engaging climate and culture using research-based practices to promote student learning;” and
- “educating the whole child,” and using multiple measures to assess students’ academic achievement and their social/emotional growth that are characteristic of successful adults.
Hardebeck noted that the district collaborates with Altoona and Chippewa Falls to set up regular legislative breakfast-forums in which most area elected officials participate. She said she also meets informally with the Altoona and Elk Mound superintendents. Statewide and CESA 10 meetings also provide opportunities for discussions with other administrators, she noted.
Hardebeck said that extra-curricular activities play “a big part” in students’ motivation to learn. In addition to many student clubs and organized activities, the high schools’ athletic teams enhance the spirit of all students, not just the players, and provide exciting entrainment for the community.
Hardebeck said the district uses different measures to evaluate students’ work, tailored to their individual learning styles.
She said she evaluates the principals in a process that parallels how principals evaluate their teachers. Like the teachers, the principals are “hard on themselves,” she said.
She added that the school board formally evaluates the superintendent every year.
Michael Hilger is an English professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and a member of the Altoona school board.