By Kellen Olshefski
staff writer
District Administrator Christopher Hibner stressed the East Troy School District’s goal to strive to become the “District of Choice,” in his address to the public at Monday’s Board of Education annual meeting.
Noting the district doesn’t hide anything from its annual report, including “the good, the bad, and the things we need to continue to work on,” Hibner said continuous improvement is one of the district’s key goals.
According to Hibner, maintaining a status quo isn’t good enough for the district and it’s imperative to continue to move the district forward.
While the word failure typically has a negative connotation, he said the district must avoid mediocrity even more.
“If we maintain only a status quo, that’s called mediocrity,” he said.
“I’m not afraid of failure, I’m not afraid of something not working … failure is a way of learning. I’m really afraid of mediocrity because with mediocrity we don’t learn anything.”
Stressing mediocrity would deter the success of the district, Hibner said the district doesn’t necessarily need to constantly have wants, but the drive to continually improve.
Continuing on, Hibner took time to touch on the district’s numerous accomplishments, noting while often recognized for extra-curricular and club accomplishments, focus on the district’s academic accomplishments is sometimes lost.
First and foremost, Hibner said he was proud of the districts recognition as Schools of Merit for its implementation of Positive Behavioral Instructional Supports (PBIS).
“We’re focusing first and foremost on trying to provide a positive learning environment,” he said.
“You’re not going to focus on the academia if you don’t have kids who are feeling safe in their environment to begin with.”
Reaching other recent milestones, such as being recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the top schools in Wisconsin and scoring “Exceeds expectations” on the state School Report Card, Hibner said it’s been nice to hear individuals recognize the district for its accomplishments.
In addition, Hibner said the district’s ability to begin the implementation of various new programs, including robotics and world cultures in the middle school, despite “great budgetary challenges,” has been an incredible accomplishment.
“We’ve been able to do that and we’re doing it because we know it’s crucial to continue to move our district forward,” he said.
“We also know we need to keep changing our programs for the benefit of kids today.”
Hibner said a key thing families in the district need to understand is the district’s dedication to high growth.
According to Hibner, the district’s number one goal is to ensure every child has a year to a year plus’s worth of learning growth.
He noted while attainment is important, the growth goal is far more important.
Hibner cited an example of a student who is already succeeding at or beyond their grade level, using Business Manager Katherine Zwirgzdas to illustrate his point.
“Even though Ms. Zwirgzdas comes into a grade and she’s at grade level doesn’t mean we’re satisfied,” he said.
“She deserves to still have growth.”
Using himself as an example, Hibner also said the district is striving to provide students below attainment that learning growth to get them up to that grade level.
While Hibner said he thinks the district is doing quite well with this and some might argue the district will never have 100 percent of its students with a year plus of learning growth, he respectfully disagrees.
“I won’t be satisfied, nor should anyone else here, until we do, year in and year out,” he said.
According to Hibner, in the top 10 percent of schools nationally, about 60 to 70 percent of students reach their growth norm target in reading. Since 2009, the district has been above a 60 percent, with a high point in 2010-11 with 67.7 percent. The percentage fell in the 2011-12 year when kindergarten and first grade were included in the calculation.
With math scores growth norm target being between 65 to 75 percent, math scores showed similar results, falling at 75 percent in the 2011-12 school year.
Finally, Hibner noted the importance of maintaining the district’s infrastructure, making sure its facilities don’t impair students from learning due to things such as lack of technology.
Hibner said it’s important students want to be going to school and are enjoying learning.
Though Hibner said he doesn’t want the district to be considered a business, to a degree it is.
“As a business, you’re going to choose which one you enjoy going to and you have a reason why you’re choosing a certain business that you’re electing to go and shop at,” he said.
“Well, if we didn’t have that mandatory attendance, would our kids come here to shop? Would they come here to learn?
“That’s what I want to make sure we’re doing when we’re the district of choice, that we don’t need a mandatory attendance because we are the best and any parent and student recognizes it, and feels it, and that’s why they’re coming.”
While an official enrollment count isn’t taken until the third Friday in September and Zwirgzdas will be computing data over the upcoming week, she said enrollment is projected to be slightly higher than in the 2012-13 school year.
However, the implementation of 4K classes in 2007 has added to the district’s enrollment. Removing 4K students from the equation, enrollment is significantly lower than in the 2004-05 school year, according to Zwirgzdas.
