Annual Meeting Message

Superintendent’s Message

As the Superintendent of the School District of Hillsboro, I am proud to present this reflection on the 2011-12 school year. In the midst of unprecedented wholesale reform in education, I firmly believe our district is in a position to continue to succeed. Our district’s mission of “Learn, Achieve, Succeed” continues to be a reminder and a challenge to each of us as we move forward.

The most notable change our employees have seen is the transition from a collective bargaining agreement to an employee handbook. Beginning last fall, the administrative team created a beginning document which was then reviewed and discussed with an Employee Relations Team. Then, in June the Board of Education approved the initial Employee Handbook. From my perspective this handbook provides for a positive relationship between staff, the board of education and administration. While there are still areas that need to be addressed (mainly post-employment benefits and teacher compensation) the framework is in place. At the present time there are still many unknowns regarding the future of collective bargaining and the legal status of Act 10, but the positive relationship between administration, board and staff will allow for our district to handle whatever is decided by the government and/or courts.

A more challenging issue to the School District is the issue of funding. Our current estimates for state aid show that we will receive 20% less in aid for the 2012-13 school year than we did in the 2006-07 school year. Needless to say, this is a very difficult challenge that continues to face the district. As we move into the 2012-13 school year there are still challenges that we face. Of primary concern is the upcoming Biennium budget. After an unprecedented cut in public school funding in the last state budget we will be anxiously awaiting the next state budget proposal.

Changes are also taking place within the area of curriculum as we move toward full incorporation of the Common Core State Standards. The work of the staff, with leadership from Terri Fanta, has us at the very least on schedule to make the transition within the DPI timeline. Additional staff in-service and workshop time has been necessary and will continue to be so as the 2014-15 deadline approached. At that point our students will begin taking the SMARTER BALANCED assessments rather than the WKCE’s. These new assessments will be directly connected to the Common Core standards.

The state is moving forward with a new teacher and principal effectiveness system that will significantly change how evaluations of staff and principals take place. There will be additional training time needed to ensure that our principals and staff are prepared for this transition.

Aside from the challenges of change, there are several positive items to report on at this time. We finished the 2011-12 school year with funds available to make some improvements. We upgraded our fleet of vehicles, greatly improved the sound system in the high school gymnasium, transformed our weight room and implemented a high quality wireless system in the high school for internet access. As stewards of taxpayer dollars each of these improvements were carefully considered to get the greatest possible value while providing quality resources for our students. Additionally, the District moved forward with the elementary office project and was able to complete a project to update that area.

Finally, we pursued four different grant opportunities. First of all, we successfully applied for and received the 21^st Century Community Learning Center grant. This grant provides $100,000 per year for 5 years to provide after school programming for our students. We made it to the final three but we not awarded a Monsanto grant that would have provided funding for updates in our Middle School science lab, but we did receive a great amount of support from our agricultural community in this process. Still unknown are two grants. We developed these as collaborative efforts with neighboring districts (Elementary School Counseling grant with Wonewoc-Center and the Innovative Approaches to Literacy grant with Norwalk-Ontario-Wilton).

I will continue to work to find better and more effective ways to communicate with all the stakeholders of the Hillsboro School District. Please contact me if you would like to further discuss our school system.

Sincerely,

Curt Bisarek

Superintendent