PW-S District earns highest rank on state report cards

Score puts school system in top category, ranks third in county
By 
BILL SCHANEN IV
Ozaukee Press staff

The Port Washington-Saukville School District achieved the highest ranking — significantly exceeds expectations — on state report cards released Tuesday and the third-highest score among school districts in Ozaukee County.

The district’s score of 84.5 was lower than only the Grafton School District, which achieved a score of 86.5, and the Mequon-Thiensville School District, which had a score of 89.5, among county schools.

The Cedarburg School District scored 83.8 to be among the four districts in the county that significantly exceeds expectations.

The Cedar Grove-Belgium and Northern Ozaukee school districts achieved the second-highest rating — exceeds expectations — with scores of 77.6 and 75.5, respectively, on the 2018-19 report cards, a state accountability measure intended to gauge the performance of districts and schools by giving them scores and ratings that range from significantly exceed expectations to fails to meet expectations.

In the Port Washington-Saukville School District, Port Washington High School, which scored 87.7, and Lincoln Elementary School, which scored 86.6, significantly exceed expectations and were the top performers.

The district’s two other elementary schools, Saukville and Dunwiddie, slipped slightly from last year but are still ranked in the exceeds expectations category.

But in many ways, all eyes were on Thomas Jefferson Middle School, which on last year’s report card was the lowest-scoring school in the district and the only one to fall into the meets expectations category. The school’s score this year jumped more than five points to put the middle school squarely in the exceeds expectations category.

“We were disappointed in (last year’s middle school) score of meeting expectations,” Supt. Michael Weber said. “But the middle school didn’t make any excuses. They just went to work.”

Thomas Jefferson Middle School Principal Steve Sukawaty said administrators and staff members agreed that the school’s score last year was unacceptable.

“We had room to improve, and we did,” he said. “I’ve been in places where when low scores came it was time to back up the excuse wagon. But here, we owned our scores. My staff said, ‘We have to change some of the things we do,’ then worked so hard toward improvement.”

Chris Surfus, the district’s director of curriculum, credits improvement at the middle school to a concerted effort to analyze performance data and make adjustments, as well as to the fact the school has now had time to adjust to significant leadership changes.

“The whole culture of the school has changed,” she said. 

Sukawaty was hired in 2016 to replace longtime principal Arlan Galarowicz, who retired. The following year, Jodi Swagel was hired to replace veteran assistant principal Liz Ferger, who also retired. And last year, a third administrative position was created at the school and John Bunyan was hired to fill it. 

“When you have teachers who worked with some administrators for 20 years, some things are going change based on what the new administrators expect,” Surfus said. “Now those changes have had time to settle in.”

State report cards measure the performance of public and some private schools — those that participate in the parental choice program — in four primary areas:

• Student achievement, which measures knowledge and skills and includes a composite of reading and math performance on the Wisconsin Student Assessment System.

• Growth, which gauges how much student knowledge of reading and math changes from year to year. 

• Closing gaps, which shows how schools are narrowing the divide in terms of academic achievement and graduation between the majority of students and those in lower-performing groups such as students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students.

• On-track to graduation and postsecondary readiness, which includes attendance, graduation rates, third-grade reading and eighth-grade math test scores and ACT participation and performance.

In the closing gaps category, Dunwiddie Elementary School and the middle school struggled, posting scores slightly lower than the state average.

“I believe the closing the gap category is an excellent addition to the report card because it’s so important that none of us lose track of any of our students,” Weber said. “It forces districts to pay attention to students who aren’t achieving at the level they should be.”

Also lower than the state average were school growth scores at Dunwiddie and Saukville elementary schools.

“We need to look at who are the students who need support. Who are we missing?” Surfus said.

Other district schools, however, excelled in those categories, with Port Washington High School achieving a perfect school growth score, while Lincoln Elementary School had a near-perfect score in that category and ranked high in the closing the gap category.

The district, Surfus said, will also study what Lincoln Elementary School and the high school are doing to help students who need additional support, then work to apply those approaches at the schools in the district that had lower report card scores in that area.

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Wisconsin’s largest paid circulation community weekly newspaper. Serving Port Washington, Saukville, Grafton, Fredonia, Belgium, as well as Ozaukee County government. Locally owned and printed in Port Washington, Wisconsin.

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