NOSD report card called good but not good enough

The Northern Ozaukee School District continued to place in the “exceeds expectations” category on this year’s Wisconsin State Report Card despite a score slump over the last few years.

Last year’s 73.6 score puts the district at 57th out of 367 kindergarten through twelfth-grade school districts in the state — within the top 16%, Supt. Dave Karrels told the Northern Ozaukee School Board on Monday.

Karrels said the district fared comparatively well to neighboring and similar-sized districts — behind Cedar Grove-Belgium but ahead of Port Washington-Saukville, West Bend, Kewaskum and Random Lake.

“That is not something to say, ‘We are happy, we are good with that,’ he said. “We want to ask, ‘What does it take to make it to the top 10%, the top 5%?’”

Karrels acknowledged that there is “a pocket of high-performing districts” around NOSD that makes competition for open enrollment students particularly fierce.

The middle school received the best score of the district’s three schools and the elementary school performed well. The high school received the lowest score and earned the lesser “meets expectations” moniker.

High School Principal Matt Zavada, who was hired last year, said he hopes to boost the score by building on the district’s strong attendance rate, test scores and outcomes for low-performing students by improving its lackluster “growth” metric.

Growth is a state measurement of academic improvement over time. 

Zavada said the high school is in the bottom third of Wisconsin schools for growth.

“When I got hired, one of the first things I did was pull up the state report card,” he said. “I saw growth was one of the things we needed to focus on. I hadn’t been in the building, I hadn’t met the teachers but I put together that as a goal.”

Zavada said he has worked with teachers to emphasize the teaching of core skills for growth, like essential questions, multiple engagements with content and processing and reflecting.

The high school introduced an academic monitoring system last year that was used in the middle school. It also started a support class for math and English.

“That alone could make big progress,” Zavada said.

Zavada pointed out that the high school far outperformed its report card number for its US News and World Report ranking of 33rd out of 569 high schools in Wisconsin.

He said Northern Ozaukee high schoolers get access to opportunities not offered even at much larger districts where he used to work, like Kohler or Mequon-Thiensville. 

Each NOSD student is put on a track to leave high school prepared for their career field.

Last year, the number of students that received industrial certifications increased, as well as the number enrolled in college courses, Zavada said.

“There are kids who are starting college as sophomores because they are going to Ozaukee,” he said.

Of last year’s graduating class of 56, 29 graduates entered a four-year college, 10 started in careers prepared with career training at the school and nine began at a community college or technical school.

Karrels said that while the district’s scores for each school are important, they don’t capture the full picture.

“Oftentimes scores are looked at in silos,” he said. “Look at one building and say how does that compare this year to last year? But if we want to have a student join us in 4-K and go to graduation, what do we want to see happen?”

Karrels said a group of NOSD alumni recently talked to the high school’s freshmen about their professional lives.

“I was so impressed by those young people sitting up there, where they are in life, how prepared they felt when they left this place,” he said. “But none of them mentioned an ACT score or class rank. They talked about knowing staff here, about being able to give a presentation — something their classmates couldn’t.

“I felt like a proud dad — knowing them in high school and seeing where they’ve come.”

Middle school Principal Charlie Schwartz celebrated another high-scoring year for the school. Its US News rank was even better at 36th out of 1,456 middle schools in the state.

“You sit there and go, ‘What does that mean?’” he said. “I don’t know. But they compared us to every other school and put us in the top 2.5%. I feel pretty proud of that.”

The score was aided by a proactive approach on attendance, Schwartz said.

“We feel it’s very important that everyone is aware of where their student is with attendance,” he said, which includes sending out letters and setting up meetings with parents.

“It’s usually one or two students,” he said. “We just need to figure out the why and get them in here.”

Schwartz said he tries to help students who simply don’t want to come or don’t have friends to develop positive relationships with teachers, and works with students who have health issues that complicate attendance to switch to a part or full-time online schedule through Wisconsin Virtual Learning.

But if issues persist, Schwartz said, he starts writing municipal tickets for truancy.

“I don’t like that route, I don’t think anyone does,” he said.

Math and English language scores both improved last year, although Schwartz pointed out the small class sizes at the school means a couple of students having a good or bad day can greatly affect the scores.

“Those numbers can be greatly affected by one, two or three students in the small areas,” he said.

The elementary school also received a good score. Like the high school, its math scores trailed its English scores.

It was ranked by US News as being in the top third of elementary schools in the state, Principal Lynn Kucharski said.

Like the middle school, the elementary school scored well on attendance.

“We take attendance very seriously. At our age for students, much of that falls on the parents,” Kucharski said.

She plans to work with a consultant to dive deeper into the state score and work with teachers to further improve it.

Karrels said the district should be proud of its success but also keep trying to improve.

It’s neighbor, the Cedar Grove-Belgium School District, is a similar size but has continually scored much higher than NOSD.

“Here’s a school district that has had turnover and changes and yet stayed consistently strong in scores,” Karrels said. “How could we learn from them?”

Karrels said there has been frustration from many superintendents over opaque changes to the state scoring metrics. 

“We can do two things,” he said. “We can either be frustrated or say at the end of the day it’s something that’s looked at and how can we improve it.”

The NOSD charter schools Sugar Maple Nature School and WVL were both placed as “exceeds expectations.”