District celebrates AP testing success, sets new activities code

By John McLoone

PRESCOTT – The Prescott School Board meeting on Wednesday, July 13 was unique. With the new 6 p.m. start time an hour earlier as of this summer, the full slate of business was tackled in under 80 minutes. That means it was still light out when the regular meeting ended, and that is indeed a rarity for a school board meeting.

In that time, the board heard a message from Superintendent Dr. Rick Spicuzza urging residents to talk to state lawmakers about providing more dollars from bulging state couers for education.

Prescott does stand to get some more aid this year to help its 2022-23 budget – final numbers aren’t known until October – but it’s apparent from reports at the meeting that the district students are excelling even as the state is devoting less of its budget to public education.

Spicuzza reported to board members that the budget process for the coming school year will start in ear- nest as soon as the school’s finance team wraps up meetings with auditors reviewing the 2021-22 numbers.

“Once that is complete, we will start the process of building the budget, although a lot of components are already in process,” he said.

The district will set its annual meeting in August for a September date for a public review of the budget. When the state aid numbers are settled in October, the board can finalize the budget at its meeting that month.

“The equalization dollars projected were released July 1. They are not finalized until Oct. 1. That’s why we can’t finalize, but the equalization does appear that we will receive slightly more dollars from the state, not more dollars overall, because there’s a levy limit. That means that the taxpayers will pay less again.”

The growth in the community tax base will mean a lower tax rate. Spicuzza also reported to the board that the board was able to lock in its $15 million bonding from the referendum for building upgrades and remodeling at 4.1 percent. That means that overall debt payments for referendum projects will impact taxpayers less also.

“If you think about trying to manage our overall funding and the impact on local taxpayers, both the equalization aid in in our favor for our local taxpayers. The mill rate based on the loans that we just took out are in the favor our local taxpayers,” he said.

With that said, he urged somewhat of a call to action from residents in the district.

“I do have a call to our community and to our board to be very aware that at this point, trying to manage out of a crisis is some of the hardest leadership challenges that I’ve ever seen. The budgets for school districts in the state of Wisconsin are facing the most challenging biellnial that we’ve faced since 2011,” said Spicuzza. “School districts are funded at a 0 percent increase for this year and the upcoming school year. You saw that the inflation rate is over 9 percent. We are paying that same diesel and gas price increases for buses as people that drive to work. The food prices are going up. Our electricity with Xcel has gone up. Our heating costs have gone up. And we have received zero extra dollars from our legislators in Madison.”

Spicuzza pointed to an article from the Wisconsin Policy Forum (wisconsinpolicyforum. org), a non-partisan policy research organization, that was projected on the large screen in the Prescott Performing Arts Center about the school spending crisis.

“There has been a decrease in the investment in our educators, in our pro- grams and in our staff from Madison. Dollars that they collect from our community are not coming back to invest in our youth, into our staff. That ultimately is going to create a crisis, and I just ask that more people would pay attention,” said Spicuzza. “Understand that there currently is a $3.9 billion surplus coming out of the biennium. Schools got zero. They have a rainy-day fund of $1.7 billion, and schools get zero. They, in the first quarter, have already collected the amount of tax revenue that they have projected for the whole year. They are running high while schools are suffering, and schools are unable to sometimes meet the necessary salary and benefits of all the employees that work in a school system.”

The school district plans to draft a resolution addressing the funding problems to pass at a future meeting.

“You know that Wisconsin produces some of the highest academic outcomes in the nation, and Prescott continues to outpace the state,” Spicuzza said. “I think it’s time that we asked for reinvestment in our public schools from our legislators.”

As testament to high academic success in Prescott, during the meeting Director of Teaching and Learning Mike Kosmalski talked about student performance on Advanced Placement tests.

He said that 125 students took AP classes this past year, with 98 percent of them testing for college credit. Of those students, 69 percent earned credit from their test scores.

“There was a total of 311 college credits earned,” he said.

That’s a new high for the school, shattering the record set last year of 251 college credits earned.

Spicuzza said that the district has also received its new testing data from last year, though it’s embargoed from official release until November.

He did “tease” that there is positive information on its way.

“I only expect even more impressive news coming out of these state tests,” he said.

Activities code updates

The board has worked to set updates to its activities code.

Activities Director Andrew Caudill presented a new provision that will put athletes having trouble making grades on a program to help them without initially penalizing them. Instead of being barred from sports if a student athlete is failing a class, they will be put on academic probation for two weeks. During that period, the student remains eligible to compete and will be given a support plan. The student will work with teachers, a counselor and administration to help get the grades to a passing level.

“We essentially want to create something for the students to help meet their needs and get them where they want to be, which is passing,” said Caudill. “During that period, they are eligible for sports. It’s not taking their eligibility right away.”

At that point, if a student still needs help but is working toward their goal, they could still be allowed to participate in athletic contests.

“If they’re making good progress, we’ll keep them on academic probation. They’ll remain eligible if they’ve done everything they are asked to do. We want to reward positive steps the students are taking,” said Caudill.

If a student is failing and isn’t working toward meet ing the goals of his or her support program, they’ll be deemed ineligible for competition. If they continue failing the class and not working toward doing better, they could become ineligible for the term.

“We want to help our students get to where they need to be. We don’t want to cre ate such a discouragement,” said Caudill. “We believe this will help us get to where we want to be but also take away some of the unintended consequences we saw from ‘You’re failing. We’ll pull you out until you’re pass –

ing.'” Board members were supportive of the new measure.

“I’m pretty happy with how this reads. I like the in- tent of this. I’m very much in support of this,” said Pat Block. “There’s a path to al lowing the student to participate and improve and there’s a path to holding them accountable.”

Also in the updated activity policy is new language on academic dishonesty that separates dishonest actions on things like major tests or projects from similar action on things like day-to-day homework.

“Dishonesty on an exam and dishonesty on a homework assignment, they should be treated differently,” said Caudill.

In the new language, dishonesty on the items that make up a bigger share of the class grade could result in a suspension of 10 percent of a sports season. Infractions on homework would be handled through behavior rules.

“This way we’re all clear on when the activities code is applied versus when it’s a behavior incident and the behavior matrix is applied,” Caudill said.

Under Armour honor

Caudill announced that Prescott learned it is one of just 33 schools in the nation selected by Under Armour to participate in a leadership seminar for female senior athletes. The equipment and clothing supplier will provide materials to the district for the program.

“That’s going to be pretty cool for us, and to be selected out of hundreds of schools is an honor for us. We’re look ing forward to getting that going this year.”

Prescott School District Activities Director Andrew Caudill

Prescott School District Superintendent Dr. Rick Spicuzza