Steve Bord is our guest on WRCO's morning shows.
We put the spotlight on the Richland School District.
Steve, the Richland Center Superintendent.
Boy, this summer is going by quickly, isn't it?
Boy, it sure is.
It's, you know, the end of or the middle of July already.
It was a hot week, boy.
But all the schools now, they're getting ready for the new year.
I think most of them have put last year behind them, maybe some financial audits and closing out of books and things like that.
But I think everybody's turning the page and getting ready for a new year.
This is a unique time of year, I think, for school districts because June is really all about wrapping up.
And you're really thinking very little about the next year, maybe some internal planning at a high level and things like that.
But graduation.
getting over you just got done with with your students leaving your teachers leaving you're kind of wrapping all of that stuff up maybe doing some hiring and then boy the 4th of July hits and it just flies by and all of a sudden you're middle of July and super registrations right around the corner teachers will be back before long and it's just um it's uh uh you walk quick and then you sprint and so we're kind of in the sprint mode right now as I'm sure many school districts are but
great
to be here.
Kerry Stoltz was here a week
ago and gave us a little bit of an update on all the construction things.
And I'm guessing it changes weekly, doesn't it?
Right now, it really does.
You know, when I've been on here over the school year, you know, there wasn't a lot of change and a lot of updates to give from, you know, November, December through May.
But boy, June, July, and next month in August, constant moving, constant things going on, and things do change literally every week.
sometimes every day, take our high school parking lot, for example.
Right now, folks can park in the student lot, but they can't park in the staff lot, and next week they're gonna be paying, or tomorrow, this week they're paving the bus lanes, and then they're gonna be shutting down the student lots, and so you gotta really be conscious of where you can get in and what's going on, and just to get to the places you need to get to.
And, you know, our school hasn't shut down.
We're still running summer leagues with
athletics, we've still got kids coming into the building, doing different things.
We've got staff coming into the building, limited access, but it's been a challenge to try to keep everyone informed on where they can do things.
Food service pickup next week looks like we're going to be moving food service pickup from the back of the building, which is where it has been through this week, to the front of the building, where the buses typically park, that black top should be cured by then.
But again, that's kind of hit or miss if the weather stays really hot that that black top might stay softer for a little longer and we might have to push that back and go into the back of the building one more week.
So I guess we'll try to keep people informed through our website and through social media and through WRCO as well.
But just just ever changing and yet really exciting.
It's exciting to go down to the intermediate school and.
see the progress that was made from one week to the next with, you know, walls going up or HVAC getting put in or just where things are really coming to come into fruition.
Chris clerkin and the custodial crew have done an outstanding job of working around all of the construction, getting floors waxed, you know, because we got to try to get all of the floors, every classroom, every hallway gets waxed.
And so it really takes a coordinated effort with the construction folks to determine which areas of the
buildings are done.
Okay, let's get a cleaning crew in there.
Let's get the floors waxed.
Let's shut that down.
But yet you don't want to do it when there's going to be heavy traffic and heavy machinery going right back over those floors once it's cured because that could scuff it up and and you have to redo it again.
So it's been a cool experience.
It's been something that this summer has really been happening, hopping, which we've put it on intentionally put it on our board agenda for June, July and August just to try
to keep the board and the public informed of what's going on with that construction, because it's just changing.
Pictures are cool to see.
I wish I could say that, you know, the public could just come on in and we'd show you what was going on, but we are literally under construction zone right now.
And so there's very few areas that are open to the public.
The offices are.
Intermediate school office has been relocated.
So there's a separate entrance there, but you can get in there.
High school office has been relocated into the guidance.
place so you can't enter in the front building but you can enter off to the side district office stays where it's at but really everything in between is a construction zone which means you know safety goggles safety vest hard hats things like that so it's difficult for for the public to come up outside of the gym but it's pretty cool to watch on the internal I've never really seen anything like it it's been a unique vantage point
Richland Center will be well represented at the state the football coaches association all-star game with coach Troxel there clerk and darling and Liam
Fingersyn and Brady Dosh.
This is a really cool thing.
I know you were an all-star basketball coach some years ago with girls, but it really is a neat thing to put the focus on your school,
isn't it?
Absolutely, Phil.
I had the honor of being an assistant coach under Dave Casey, the longtime prayer dishean coach back in the early 90s, and then had the honor of being the head coach for the girls all-star game in the early 2000s.
And it's a unique and a great opportunity.
just from the standpoint that you're representing Richland Center and the athletics that we have.
And oftentimes you get to showcase your facilities.
That wasn't necessarily the case with the football, but certainly was with the basketball.
But it's also really unique from the standpoint that you're getting to coach all stars from other schools, right?
And that's a cool perspective because I think when you have kids, students, Liam and Brady in this case, getting to interact with other athletes
from other schools, I think they find out, you know, kids are kids and doesn't matter where you're from, they all have a lot of really great similarities.
And in this case, they're all football all-stars and it's just pretty cool.
And then from a coaching standpoint, you know, you get to coach, you know, the elite of the elite for that year.
It's a pretty special opportunity.
I always found that when you're in your high school teams and you've got a particular drill or something that you want.
to do, you've got to allocate a certain amount of time to go through the drill.
Here's what we're trying to teach.
Here's what we're trying to do.
And it might be something that you're doing for, let's just say 15 minutes.
And then you get the all star teams and you bring them in there and you think, okay, we'll allow 15 minutes for that.
And they've got the whole drill down pad in like three or four minutes.
Like it's just crazy fast how quickly they pick stuff up.
And it really brings an appreciation to the wonderful talents that we have, not only locally, but around our state and quite
honor.
We haven't had you back to actually discuss the findings of Hive Mind.
You had that in the community a couple of meetings earlier this year and maybe you could share with some of the results here today.
Yeah I appreciate that.
That's great.
So as you know we've talked about it.
Our board created a steering committee made up of 13 or 14 community members.
They really wanted an administrative hands-off approach as well as a as a board member hands-off approach.
I was present at most of the meetings as was our
Board President Aaron Ambihon, really as a liaison, we were not active participants, but really just listened to what was going on, maybe had to answer some questions like, can we do this?
Can we do that from a policy standpoint?
But really our jobs were for Aaron to be able to report back to the board.
These are the things that are going on and for me to be able to do the same thing to our administration.
And then of course that steering committee was tasked with developing that two-day, two-night community event.
the end or earlier the spring called the hive mind and we had a hundred plus community members at each of the nights Sunday and Wednesday and they gathered all of this information.
I think there was well there's thousands and thousands of pieces of data that were collected from each of the tables and that was all put into a giant spreadsheet where they collected it all.
And then the steering committee with the help of Steve Schrader from the Donovan Group who kind of facilitated this, they did a thematic analysis on it.
And so they took all of those pieces of data and our steering committee then reconvened after that community event and said, here are the things that our community wants from our school district.
And I thought that they did really an outstanding job of really looking at the data and not trying to interject their own personal beliefs or the beliefs of their friends, but really listening to what did that.
group of 200 plus people say that they wanted from our school district.
And that's, you know, we had everything from local business owners to retired people, staff members or retired elsewhere to young adults with just starting their families to staff members, things like that.
So we had a really good turnout from that event.
And then you collect all of the data.
And I think that most people would agree that there were probably
50 things that came out of there that were all really good, really, really good things.
But to me, the most difficult thing, and I thought our steering committee did an outstanding job with was try to hone that into, okay, we realize there are maybe 50 different things that are all really good.
And it'd be great if we could do all of these things.
But really, what we're trying to do is
narrow it down to the here are the top priorities here are the things that we think speak the loudest from our community that we heard and we saw
Through this data collection and through this event and so that's that's really what culminated and the steering committee presented To our board at the last meeting in June.
I think it was the 24th of June and our board adopted that and so from that They reestablished a new mission and vision statement for our school district and so our new mission statement I'll just read it's just a sentence here the Richland school district empowers all students through
through strong relationships, high quality learning experiences, diverse pathways, and community partnerships that prepare students for a changing world.
And while that's one sentence, and it's a longer sentence, but it's one sentence, I think it's really, really important for the folks to know that every single one of those words was intentionally chosen by that steering committee.
They wanted specifically words like strong relationships.
We know that's been,
something that we've gotten better at and something that all school districts need to continue to push.
That high quality learning experience.
I think our community saw value in the alternative pathways that we have and so they wanted to make sure that that was in there and then really preparing our students for an ever-changing world and a world that can look a lot different for any individual student.
I think one of the things that our community spoke loud and clear was
that we don't want our school district to put such a huge emphasis on students going to college.
We value college and we believe that there's certain groups of students that should and can go to college, but that doesn't have to be the only pathway that students take.
There are a lot of other really, really great jobs out there where they don't have to necessarily go to college.
Maybe it's a technical school, which is a shorter college stint.
Maybe it's an apprenticeship.
Maybe it's just entering the workforce, getting the training.
Maybe it's taking on...
the family farm, maybe it's going into the military.
And so regardless of what those pathways look like, our job as a school district from pre-K all the way through until they graduate with grade 12 is to make sure that those students are prepared for whatever life brings them after school, after graduation.
And I think that that was really important.
And so then they also established our vision.
So our mission, mission statement is kind of
why do you exist, right?
And then our vision is where do we see us?
What do we want to see us become?
And so the steering committee came up with the vision of to be a thriving rural school district where every student is known, challenged, supported, and prepared to succeed in life, careers, and community.
So again, that's the vision that they want for our school district.
I think you can see a lot of similarities there.
And then finally, back to those priorities, they established five, what they're calling pillars or pillars of success or pillars of excellence for the board and the administration and our staff to look at establishing.
And with these five pillars, they wanted them to all center around some core values.
And so again, mission, vision and values, we talked about the mission and the vision, the five values that they wanted to be visibly seen through
these pillars were for our school district to be transparent.
I think that everybody can appreciate when school districts communicate well.
You can never communicate enough.
It can always be better and it can always be more transparent.
So making sure that that's one of our our core values, that we remain student-centered, that the experience that we provide is both rigorous
and relevant.
And I think that those two words are really, really crucial because you don't want to get too far one way or the other.
You don't want to make something so rigorous, but there has no relevance to it, where students don't know how to apply it to real life.
And you also don't want it to be so relevant, but they're not learning core academic standards, right?
So there's got to be this balance between pushing and challenging our students, providing them with the information that they need, but also to provide that relevance.
Why?
do we need to know this?
Why do we want to learn this?
Why do we need to do this?
So that relevance is important.
Another value with health was health and safety, making sure that our students health and safety is always looked at.
And then final value is simply the word respect and ensuring that all students are treated with respect and that our students understand how they can act respectfully.
And so all of these pillars were established with kind of those
values intertwined and intermixed together.
And the five pillars
that they came up with, and I know that they're general at this point, but they really wanted to focus on academic excellence.
They really wanted to make sure that we had a school community where we have a safe, welcoming school where every student feels valued.
They really wanted to make sure that we had exceptional staff, that we were able to make the Richland School District be a place where
staff, teachers, paraprofessionals, aides, custodians, food service, IT, whatever it might be that they want to work in the Richland School District, that we can attract them, but also that we can support them when they're here, and therefore we can retain them.
Okay, so that exceptional staff component.
They put an emphasis on financial stewardship, where we really try to make sure that we're transparent with the finances that we've done.
Again, that goes back to that core value, but also that we can provide our students with a good educational experience while being fiscally responsible to the taxpayers' dollars that they're investing into our school.
Different things like investing into buildings and then turning around and selling them.
Those kinds of things got brought up in the
the financial stewardship and then finally the community connection they really wanted to see our school district become a vital part of our community and really have do a better job of establishing connections with local businesses local organizations and the community as a whole so that our students understand the value of community the value of those connections with the hopes of then maybe those students want to live in the Richland
community in the Richland area and send their children to the Richland School District where where the process can start over.
So this will be kind of an
ongoing thing.
These are certainly the five pillars.
We've got our mission and vision statement.
All of that is well established now.
So now the next steps, Phil, will be for the administration and the board to work together to really hone that down.
And this will be probably a six to nine month process, although I'm cautiously optimistic that we might be able to get that done a little quicker, but it's going to be a process in terms of really saying, okay, this is what we are going to focus on based on the data and the feedback that we heard.
for each of these five pillars.
And this is how we are able to get a measurement to see whether or not we're actually doing what the community wants us to do.
So with that, we're gonna have to establish some baseline measurements.
And that can look differently, right?
We might use something like a student attendance rate rates to determine, do students want to be in school?
Do they want to be here?
We take a baseline measurement now.
This is the rate that we have.
I think we had 93.4%
attendance rate last year.
Well, we can get that up to 96%.
We know that we're moving in the right direction.
So we'll have some very specific key performance indicators for each of these pillars for our board and our community to determine whether or not we're moving the needle.
And that's not to imply that the goals are going to be set so low that they're just an automatic given that they're going to be successful.
I think that we want to create stretch goals.
We want to have those goals out there where it's
just beyond our reach where we're always trying to be a little bit better.
And you know what, some of the things that we try and some of the things that we do,
may be a failure, an epic failure, right?
And they may not go as intended.
But even from those failures, we can still learn things.
And there might be some small components that were like, okay, as a whole, this was a failure.
This did not work well.
We tried this.
It didn't work.
But we did learn that these couple of small pieces worked.
So let's try something different now with that information that we know.
And so we're always trying to get better, trying to use data to drive our decisions and really try to become the school district that
community wants us to be.
I talked a lot about education and academic achievement extracurriculars and sports were they considered any of this Steve?
Yeah absolutely that was brought up by the steering committee in numerous ways and I didn't go into reading each of the sublines of each of those pillars but within those pillars they want the students to have a good school experience to be able to be involved in things to be able to be part of teams and activities and those kinds of things so extra
is certainly a key component into shaping the lives of our young students and our students throughout and making sure that they have opportunities to grow and develop outside of the classrooms, but using all of it and tying it together to really just become good people when they graduate from Richland Center.
Steve Moore, our guest on the morning show will continue with more after these words.
Steve board is our guest Richland Center superintendent Well as we talk about we kind of recapped what we talked about in the first half of the show the hive mind and the findings and You know what the board is looking at but so what is next?
What's the next the step in the process
Steve?
Yeah, so again our administration is going to be working with our board putting this together on what our what our goals are and our measurements are as if they relate to the pillars
Um, how do folks stay involved?
Okay.
So, uh, there's a couple of different ways that this will happen.
One, the findings and the things that we're talking about, uh, at the board level will typically happen at our first, first board meeting of the month.
And so that is the second Wednesday.
So our board has two board meetings a month.
It's the second Wednesday of the month and the fourth Wednesday of the month.
For the most part, you get into some of those Thanksgiving Christmas and there's a, there's a few minor changes, but that's generally how it will work.
The first board meeting of the month.
which will be the one that we have or just had last week, I should say on the 10th, that's really more of a governance board.
And so that's really where they're talking about how to govern as a board and also where they will be discussing a lot of these things as it relates to results and student achievement around this strategic planning.
And then the second meeting of the month, which is the fourth Wednesday, that's really more of the action board meeting where a lot of the
Formalities get taken care of a lot of action will take if there's a policy that needs updating if there's things that need to happen So really that second Wednesday of the month will be a great place for folks to stay Updated continually of course if they miss that board meeting that's on our website on our YouTube channel And they can always go back and watch any of our board meetings for that matter
Additionally, with the help of Carrie Stoltz, our marketing communications director, we will be making sure that we're informing our community and certainly our steering committee and anybody who attended that Hive Mine event.
Most of them, if not all of them, gave us their email addresses and we're not going to use that for any other purposes other than to keep them informed of the things that are going on.
And so there'll be an email going out here shortly talking about many of the things that we talked about here this morning, but then we'll use that to keep
them keep them updated as well and so that's that's really where they're going to be done and then of course our website has that really won't be a source of information for things that are coming but it will be a great source of information for what has been done so in the near future and when I say the near future probably next week we will have a portion of our website launched where all of this information that we talked about all of the pillars of excellence along with the mission
vision and values will all be posted on our website, as well as all of the information that was collected during those two days at our Hive Mind event.
So every piece of information that was collected was recorded.
And so if somebody remembers saying something specific, if it was wrote down at their table.
it got recorded into this document and they should be able to look through the long lengthy document and they should be able to find the comment that they made as long as they ensured that their note taker at their table recorded it, it will be there someplace.
And so I think that will be really cool for our community to be able to see all of the different aspects and thoughts and components that were put into this thing and for us to be able to relay it in a very transparent manner.
and have it available for the community and really the entire world to see.
With a new school year starting before too long what's the latest as far as employment and hiring and how's that going?
Yeah we've had a really good hiring year fortunately we did not have you know a ton of openings as at least relatively speaking there have been some years where just the the stars align and you just got a lot of openings right people have moved or gotten out of the business or retired whatever it might be but this
year we had a relatively light load of openings we had a really great hiring initial wave there in March and April and then of course there's always that second wave of late resignations and folks that maybe are moving back closer to home things like that so we had this initial wave and then the second wave really all we have left right now we've got a few cross categorical special education teaching positions open
And so special education is a difficult field for us to fill as many school districts.
It's just there's just not a lot of special education teachers.
We've started a new initiative to try to help folks get their special education license.
So if there are folks that are interested in maybe trying spec ed, but didn't want to invest the money in going back to school, we've got a program that we can help with that and that we can incentivize them to try to get their
license and be part of our special education program.
And then we've got a handful of support staff positions open.
Those are ongoing throughout the year.
You know, it doesn't seem like there's many months that go by where we don't have an opening somewhere, right?
Maybe in our food service, maybe in our custodial crew, maybe in our classroom aid.
So folks are interested in being part of really a great school district with great people and really doing some some really great things with our students.
I encourage you to look at our website, give the district office a call, see if there's something that they would like to do.
And if someone is interested in looking at that special education option, they can certainly give us a call and we'll talk more about that as well.
But for the most part, our hiring has gone well.
We're excited about the new staff that we have.
We're excited to get them on board here in the middle of August and we're excited for them to get in front of our students and start making that positive impact.
What's the latest on the campus property?
I think we ask you that every time you're in here.
Yeah,
so okay, so I think I just kind of give a quick summary of what we've talked about in the past.
So the campus property, specifically Melville Hall, the gymnasium, the parking lots in front of Melville and the gymnasium, not the Simons lot that that's always wanted to stay part of Simons, as well as the green space, the athletics fields, if you will.
That was all going to be purchased by the
school district for for a dollar.
Well as we got into the surveying of that land because the county owns you know all of that acreage
We found out that a good portion of that land was under a grant by the DNR called the Loccon Grant, and it was a grant that was established back in, I believe, 1981, that basically said, we're going to give you money and you need to turn the space into or reserve the space as recreational space.
And so the tennis courts of Simons and the green space outside of Simons, that was all part of the Loccon Grant.
And of course, when it was all the campus, that was not that big a deal.
It was all owned and it was all used for that purpose.
But now the area that the school district was looking to purchase, when the surveying was done and we got ready to take the next steps, we found out that the Law Con Grant extended to areas beyond what the school district was initially willing or wanting to purchase, which was the parking lot next to Simons as well as the area that's by the tennis courts.
And so our first thought was we'll see if we can transfer that
land, the parking lot and the tennis courts.
I believe that that was in just under two acres of land.
Let's see if we can transfer the grant, put that land out of the grant and instead put the area.
South of brush Creek between the Creek and Highway 14.
None of that was part of the grant Let's transfer it to there and it will all be part of the school district's new property and all remain recreational And that's like 3.8 acres Well, the DNR said even though it's more acreage It also has to be of equal or greater value and they did not find that the the 3.8 acres of Really the swamp land if you will was of the same value
value or greater than that 1.8 acres of the tennis courts and the parking lot.
So there was an option to go through an appraisal.
We decided not to do that.
So now where we're at is that the county and the school district have verbally agreed that the school district can just take over.
everything that is encompassed by the lock on grant.
So that would be the parking lot that Simon's is on, the Simon's parking lot as well as the tennis courts with the idea that the county would remove the tennis courts and make it green space so that there doesn't have to be maintenance there.
And then we would get an easement for the county and the Simon's recreation center to be able to use and maintain the parking lot as well as responsible for snow plowing.
So it's essentially still remains theirs.
And so
So we believe that we've got the okay from the DNR.
That is jumping through a couple of the county committees.
right now they may have gone through it already and then next week on the 21st I believe it's going to the county board for approval of that revised offer and then on the 22nd of of July it will go to the school board to approve the same thing and both of our boards are are very well informed on what's going on here they've been involved along the way so we certainly don't see any any issues there Trisha Clemens has been been great to work with with
that as well.
And then after it's approved by the board, then because the campus property is within the city limits, the city has to approve any subdividing of parcels within the city.
It has to be part of their long range plan.
And with that being a really big piece of property, it wants to make sure that everybody wants to make sure that it fits within the city's long range plan.
So after it gets approved by both of our boards, the final step will then be
to go through the planning commission for at the city council level at the city level.
I think that'll happen in early August.
And then final approval will happen at the common council of the city.
I want to say September 1st, but it might be the last week in August.
And then we should be able to close on it.
So I think all the eyes are dotted and teaser crossed from a detail standpoint.
I think we've jumped through all of the hurdles and now it's just, you know, doing some format.
and going through all of the different boards, the county board, the school board, obviously to approve what's going to actually be transferred to the school district and then the city's involvement from the standpoint that that will be in the city limits or is in the city limits.
And so they're gonna need to make sure that they endorse the plan of that.
And so that will split the campus property up into really two parcels, one that the school district is owning, which if you
drive in the new bridge and really everything to the left of that new bridge all the way up to Melville the gym and then wrapping around Simons and then everything else Simons and all of the rest of the property both to the north and to the east will remain part of the county so the the CSM or the certified survey map will break it up into two parcels
Once that goes through the city as I mentioned then we can close the school district will then officially own that property and then this the city and the county they can look at what future development looks like for the rest of that property I think they're doing some demolition of the of some of the buildings right now
I don't want to speak on behalf of the county on what their plans are and things like that, but that's generally speaking what will happen.
So with that being really close to the start of school and possibly even on the first day of school on September 1st, one of the next internal steps that we will be doing is I'll be working with Ms.
Clements and we'll see if we can get some sort of an agreement in writing that will allow the school district to use Melville Hall.
We've already got an MOU to use the gymnasium and that's worked out.
great but really see if we can get in there to start using Melville Hall we might have to be put the pause and put the brakes on any renovations or remodeling that we need to do but at least if we can get some of our
Alternative learning spaces in there at the start of year.
That's much better than than trying to move them halfway through the year Not that it can't happen But I just think it'd be cleaner if we could just start them off in in that area on September 1st But I'm optimistic it'll all work out.
It's nice to see a lot of hard work finally coming to fruition and keeping a couple of those campus buildings remaining educational purposes and under the ownership of the school district and again, just very thankful
that we've got such a good relationship with the county and the city and that all three entities are really working together to try to make this happen and and yet protect the the long-range future of our of our community as well.
Well it will be super registration before too long won't it?
It will be super registration.
Super registration this year is on August 12th so that will be from one until seven o'clock that's it's a Tuesday.
Our community has gotten very adept at what super registration is all about.
Our families have gotten very efficient with it.
There's a lot of online registration and paperwork that can be done on the front end.
Expect that to open up around the 1st of August so our families to start to be able to be at home, log into Skyward, fill out some of that information, update their address, contact information, emergency contacts, medical needs.
allergies, things like that.
That's all a crucial, crucial part of our beginning of the year and back to school registration, as well as just general information about my kid needs transportation, but they only need it on Wednesdays when we have early outs or if there's a weather delay or a cancellation where we get out early in the school year, I need transportation, dietary restrictions, things like, are you okay as a parent with the school district giving your child
Ibuprofen if they've got a headache those kinds of things so those are all part of the forms that can be done and if parents can do those on the front end before super registration that makes super registration process very quick and easy for those parents and families by the same token if they if you need help or if you need translation services or anything like that
By all means, you are welcome to come to Super Registration and we will walk you through every step of the process and help you along the way.
There'll be food trucks available at the high school.
And then it's a great opportunity for parents or students to meet their principles, but also to get their school picture taken.
And that's been something that has been really good for our families, got really good feedback from them.
Instead of having to, you know, you and I, our parents would have, you know, spiffed up our hair, probably got a spit shower on top.
And then they send us to school in our good clothes and then you and I would go out and play football in the morning and then we'd come in and our hair would be a mess and we weren't ready for.
photos.
So this is one of the things that parents have really really appreciated is having the ability to get their children dressed up in the clothes that they want, making sure that they look appropriate, they don't have barbecue from lunch still on their chin, and they can get their picture taken.
Oftentimes their parents are able to watch and make sure because kids will often, especially the little ones, they sometimes can get frightened.
They can just make sure it all goes well and they get a really really good
school photo and I think our our school photos have really improved in quality specifically for that reason now if they can't make it to super registration we'll still have a time when they early in the school year will have a makeup day maybe the pictures didn't turn out like you wanted they blinked there was something that you didn't catch but you want them redone or if you just weren't able to make it to super registration there'll be still be an opportunity for that but August 12th that's a that's a big day it's really kind of our first formal school day
with all of our families and our staff and just a really, really exciting day to see 800, 900 people come through the high school gymnasium and get registered for school.
And last but not least, this is an anniversary year for the district.
You were telling me about that before we went on the air.
You had to do some research and figure all this out.
Tell us
about that.
Yeah, I'll give you a little background story before I give the spoiler here.
But about a year ago, we had a federal grant, part of the drug-free communities grant, actually.
And that was managed through a governmental portal called SAM.gov.
And with that, we had to register with this new portal and part of the registration process because it's not only school districts, but it can be private sectors.
Anybody can apply or manage or be a contractor of a federal grant or they can apply for it anyway.
And so when the school district applied, one of the things that we had to provide was proof
of establishment of what year the school district actually started.
And we thought this would be a relatively easy process.
It ended up being a very, very difficult process, but we were able to find the original board minutes handwritten in our, believe our public library.
And the first year of the Richland School District officially was 1876, which means that this becomes, as of July 1st, this is the 150th.
birthday of the Richland School District.
And so that's really pretty cool.
Of course, our high school was built in 1996.
So it's kind of our 30th anniversary of the high school being built.
But we're going to be doing some special celebrations throughout the year, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Richland School District in existence.
And I now have proof that that is when it happened.
And that's pretty cool.
It was pretty neat to see.
I think most people thought that it was around the 1912, 1913, because we did have
some information.
that focused on that as well.
But when we were able to go back and find the actual minutes, it was 1876.
So 150th anniversary to the Richland School District.
Congratulations.
That has to be one of the older districts in the state, I would think.
Boy, that is a great question.
And one of the places we actually contacted was the Department of Public Instruction and the state to see, do they have this information?
Do they have to register as a school district?
And you would now, but they did not have that information.
So that makes it very difficult to compare to see where are we one of the oldest, you know, maybe the oldest.
Are we in the one of the 10 oldest or are we just average?
I really don't know the answer to that.
But I thought the same thing.
We have to be one of the oldest.
Of course, we know things like we've got, you know, the nation's oldest marching band and some of those things.
So I have to believe just based on putting some of that together and extrapolating that, that we have to be one of the oldest school districts in Wisconsin.
Great.
Well, I know it'll be memorable.
Thanks for joining us today, Steve.
Yeah, you bet.
I appreciate it as always.
Have a great rest of the summer.
Superintendent Steve Bord representing the Richland District down this portion of the morning show.
Steve Bord is our guest on WRCO's morning shows.
We put the spotlight on the Richland School District.
Steve, the Richland Center Superintendent.
Boy, this summer is going by quickly, isn't it?
Boy, it sure is.
It's, you know, the end of or the middle of July already.
It was a hot week, boy.
But all the schools now, they're getting ready for the new year.
I think most of them have put last year behind them, maybe some financial audits and closing out of books and things like that.
But I think everybody's turning the page and getting ready for a new year.
This is a unique time of year, I think, for school districts because June is really all about wrapping up.
And you're really thinking very little about the next year, maybe some internal planning at a high level and things like that.
But graduation.
getting over you just got done with with your students leaving your teachers leaving you're kind of wrapping all of that stuff up maybe doing some hiring and then boy the 4th of July hits and it just flies by and all of a sudden you're middle of July and super registrations right around the corner teachers will be back before long and it's just um it's uh uh you walk quick and then you sprint and so we're kind of in the sprint mode right now as I'm sure many school districts are but
great
to be here.
Kerry Stoltz was here a week
ago and gave us a little bit of an update on all the construction things.
And I'm guessing it changes weekly, doesn't it?
Right now, it really does.
You know, when I've been on here over the school year, you know, there wasn't a lot of change and a lot of updates to give from, you know, November, December through May.
But boy, June, July, and next month in August, constant moving, constant things going on, and things do change literally every week.
sometimes every day, take our high school parking lot, for example.
Right now, folks can park in the student lot, but they can't park in the staff lot, and next week they're gonna be paying, or tomorrow, this week they're paving the bus lanes, and then they're gonna be shutting down the student lots, and so you gotta really be conscious of where you can get in and what's going on, and just to get to the places you need to get to.
And, you know, our school hasn't shut down.
We're still running summer leagues with
athletics, we've still got kids coming into the building, doing different things.
We've got staff coming into the building, limited access, but it's been a challenge to try to keep everyone informed on where they can do things.
Food service pickup next week looks like we're going to be moving food service pickup from the back of the building, which is where it has been through this week, to the front of the building, where the buses typically park, that black top should be cured by then.
But again, that's kind of hit or miss if the weather stays really hot that that black top might stay softer for a little longer and we might have to push that back and go into the back of the building one more week.
So I guess we'll try to keep people informed through our website and through social media and through WRCO as well.
But just just ever changing and yet really exciting.
It's exciting to go down to the intermediate school and.
see the progress that was made from one week to the next with, you know, walls going up or HVAC getting put in or just where things are really coming to come into fruition.
Chris clerkin and the custodial crew have done an outstanding job of working around all of the construction, getting floors waxed, you know, because we got to try to get all of the floors, every classroom, every hallway gets waxed.
And so it really takes a coordinated effort with the construction folks to determine which areas of the
buildings are done.
Okay, let's get a cleaning crew in there.
Let's get the floors waxed.
Let's shut that down.
But yet you don't want to do it when there's going to be heavy traffic and heavy machinery going right back over those floors once it's cured because that could scuff it up and and you have to redo it again.
So it's been a cool experience.
It's been something that this summer has really been happening, hopping, which we've put it on intentionally put it on our board agenda for June, July and August just to try
to keep the board and the public informed of what's going on with that construction, because it's just changing.
Pictures are cool to see.
I wish I could say that, you know, the public could just come on in and we'd show you what was going on, but we are literally under construction zone right now.
And so there's very few areas that are open to the public.
The offices are.
Intermediate school office has been relocated.
So there's a separate entrance there, but you can get in there.
High school office has been relocated into the guidance.
place so you can't enter in the front building but you can enter off to the side district office stays where it's at but really everything in between is a construction zone which means you know safety goggles safety vest hard hats things like that so it's difficult for for the public to come up outside of the gym but it's pretty cool to watch on the internal I've never really seen anything like it it's been a unique vantage point
Richland Center will be well represented at the state the football coaches association all-star game with coach Troxel there clerk and darling and Liam
Fingersyn and Brady Dosh.
This is a really cool thing.
I know you were an all-star basketball coach some years ago with girls, but it really is a neat thing to put the focus on your school,
isn't it?
Absolutely, Phil.
I had the honor of being an assistant coach under Dave Casey, the longtime prayer dishean coach back in the early 90s, and then had the honor of being the head coach for the girls all-star game in the early 2000s.
And it's a unique and a great opportunity.
just from the standpoint that you're representing Richland Center and the athletics that we have.
And oftentimes you get to showcase your facilities.
That wasn't necessarily the case with the football, but certainly was with the basketball.
But it's also really unique from the standpoint that you're getting to coach all stars from other schools, right?
And that's a cool perspective because I think when you have kids, students, Liam and Brady in this case, getting to interact with other athletes
from other schools, I think they find out, you know, kids are kids and doesn't matter where you're from, they all have a lot of really great similarities.
And in this case, they're all football all-stars and it's just pretty cool.
And then from a coaching standpoint, you know, you get to coach, you know, the elite of the elite for that year.
It's a pretty special opportunity.
I always found that when you're in your high school teams and you've got a particular drill or something that you want.
to do, you've got to allocate a certain amount of time to go through the drill.
Here's what we're trying to teach.
Here's what we're trying to do.
And it might be something that you're doing for, let's just say 15 minutes.
And then you get the all star teams and you bring them in there and you think, okay, we'll allow 15 minutes for that.
And they've got the whole drill down pad in like three or four minutes.
Like it's just crazy fast how quickly they pick stuff up.
And it really brings an appreciation to the wonderful talents that we have, not only locally, but around our state and quite
honor.
We haven't had you back to actually discuss the findings of Hive Mind.
You had that in the community a couple of meetings earlier this year and maybe you could share with some of the results here today.
Yeah I appreciate that.
That's great.
So as you know we've talked about it.
Our board created a steering committee made up of 13 or 14 community members.
They really wanted an administrative hands-off approach as well as a as a board member hands-off approach.
I was present at most of the meetings as was our
Board President Aaron Ambihon, really as a liaison, we were not active participants, but really just listened to what was going on, maybe had to answer some questions like, can we do this?
Can we do that from a policy standpoint?
But really our jobs were for Aaron to be able to report back to the board.
These are the things that are going on and for me to be able to do the same thing to our administration.
And then of course that steering committee was tasked with developing that two-day, two-night community event.
the end or earlier the spring called the hive mind and we had a hundred plus community members at each of the nights Sunday and Wednesday and they gathered all of this information.
I think there was well there's thousands and thousands of pieces of data that were collected from each of the tables and that was all put into a giant spreadsheet where they collected it all.
And then the steering committee with the help of Steve Schrader from the Donovan Group who kind of facilitated this, they did a thematic analysis on it.
And so they took all of those pieces of data and our steering committee then reconvened after that community event and said, here are the things that our community wants from our school district.
And I thought that they did really an outstanding job of really looking at the data and not trying to interject their own personal beliefs or the beliefs of their friends, but really listening to what did that.
group of 200 plus people say that they wanted from our school district.
And that's, you know, we had everything from local business owners to retired people, staff members or retired elsewhere to young adults with just starting their families to staff members, things like that.
So we had a really good turnout from that event.
And then you collect all of the data.
And I think that most people would agree that there were probably
50 things that came out of there that were all really good, really, really good things.
But to me, the most difficult thing, and I thought our steering committee did an outstanding job with was try to hone that into, okay, we realize there are maybe 50 different things that are all really good.
And it'd be great if we could do all of these things.
But really, what we're trying to do is
narrow it down to the here are the top priorities here are the things that we think speak the loudest from our community that we heard and we saw
Through this data collection and through this event and so that's that's really what culminated and the steering committee presented To our board at the last meeting in June.
I think it was the 24th of June and our board adopted that and so from that They reestablished a new mission and vision statement for our school district and so our new mission statement I'll just read it's just a sentence here the Richland school district empowers all students through
through strong relationships, high quality learning experiences, diverse pathways, and community partnerships that prepare students for a changing world.
And while that's one sentence, and it's a longer sentence, but it's one sentence, I think it's really, really important for the folks to know that every single one of those words was intentionally chosen by that steering committee.
They wanted specifically words like strong relationships.
We know that's been,
something that we've gotten better at and something that all school districts need to continue to push.
That high quality learning experience.
I think our community saw value in the alternative pathways that we have and so they wanted to make sure that that was in there and then really preparing our students for an ever-changing world and a world that can look a lot different for any individual student.
I think one of the things that our community spoke loud and clear was
that we don't want our school district to put such a huge emphasis on students going to college.
We value college and we believe that there's certain groups of students that should and can go to college, but that doesn't have to be the only pathway that students take.
There are a lot of other really, really great jobs out there where they don't have to necessarily go to college.
Maybe it's a technical school, which is a shorter college stint.
Maybe it's an apprenticeship.
Maybe it's just entering the workforce, getting the training.
Maybe it's taking on...
the family farm, maybe it's going into the military.
And so regardless of what those pathways look like, our job as a school district from pre-K all the way through until they graduate with grade 12 is to make sure that those students are prepared for whatever life brings them after school, after graduation.
And I think that that was really important.
And so then they also established our vision.
So our mission, mission statement is kind of
why do you exist, right?
And then our vision is where do we see us?
What do we want to see us become?
And so the steering committee came up with the vision of to be a thriving rural school district where every student is known, challenged, supported, and prepared to succeed in life, careers, and community.
So again, that's the vision that they want for our school district.
I think you can see a lot of similarities there.
And then finally, back to those priorities, they established five, what they're calling pillars or pillars of success or pillars of excellence for the board and the administration and our staff to look at establishing.
And with these five pillars, they wanted them to all center around some core values.
And so again, mission, vision and values, we talked about the mission and the vision, the five values that they wanted to be visibly seen through
these pillars were for our school district to be transparent.
I think that everybody can appreciate when school districts communicate well.
You can never communicate enough.
It can always be better and it can always be more transparent.
So making sure that that's one of our our core values, that we remain student-centered, that the experience that we provide is both rigorous
and relevant.
And I think that those two words are really, really crucial because you don't want to get too far one way or the other.
You don't want to make something so rigorous, but there has no relevance to it, where students don't know how to apply it to real life.
And you also don't want it to be so relevant, but they're not learning core academic standards, right?
So there's got to be this balance between pushing and challenging our students, providing them with the information that they need, but also to provide that relevance.
Why?
do we need to know this?
Why do we want to learn this?
Why do we need to do this?
So that relevance is important.
Another value with health was health and safety, making sure that our students health and safety is always looked at.
And then final value is simply the word respect and ensuring that all students are treated with respect and that our students understand how they can act respectfully.
And so all of these pillars were established with kind of those
values intertwined and intermixed together.
And the five pillars
that they came up with, and I know that they're general at this point, but they really wanted to focus on academic excellence.
They really wanted to make sure that we had a school community where we have a safe, welcoming school where every student feels valued.
They really wanted to make sure that we had exceptional staff, that we were able to make the Richland School District be a place where
staff, teachers, paraprofessionals, aides, custodians, food service, IT, whatever it might be that they want to work in the Richland School District, that we can attract them, but also that we can support them when they're here, and therefore we can retain them.
Okay, so that exceptional staff component.
They put an emphasis on financial stewardship, where we really try to make sure that we're transparent with the finances that we've done.
Again, that goes back to that core value, but also that we can provide our students with a good educational experience while being fiscally responsible to the taxpayers' dollars that they're investing into our school.
Different things like investing into buildings and then turning around and selling them.
Those kinds of things got brought up in the
the financial stewardship and then finally the community connection they really wanted to see our school district become a vital part of our community and really have do a better job of establishing connections with local businesses local organizations and the community as a whole so that our students understand the value of community the value of those connections with the hopes of then maybe those students want to live in the Richland
community in the Richland area and send their children to the Richland School District where where the process can start over.
So this will be kind of an
ongoing thing.
These are certainly the five pillars.
We've got our mission and vision statement.
All of that is well established now.
So now the next steps, Phil, will be for the administration and the board to work together to really hone that down.
And this will be probably a six to nine month process, although I'm cautiously optimistic that we might be able to get that done a little quicker, but it's going to be a process in terms of really saying, okay, this is what we are going to focus on based on the data and the feedback that we heard.
for each of these five pillars.
And this is how we are able to get a measurement to see whether or not we're actually doing what the community wants us to do.
So with that, we're gonna have to establish some baseline measurements.
And that can look differently, right?
We might use something like a student attendance rate rates to determine, do students want to be in school?
Do they want to be here?
We take a baseline measurement now.
This is the rate that we have.
I think we had 93.4%
attendance rate last year.
Well, we can get that up to 96%.
We know that we're moving in the right direction.
So we'll have some very specific key performance indicators for each of these pillars for our board and our community to determine whether or not we're moving the needle.
And that's not to imply that the goals are going to be set so low that they're just an automatic given that they're going to be successful.
I think that we want to create stretch goals.
We want to have those goals out there where it's
just beyond our reach where we're always trying to be a little bit better.
And you know what, some of the things that we try and some of the things that we do,
may be a failure, an epic failure, right?
And they may not go as intended.
But even from those failures, we can still learn things.
And there might be some small components that were like, okay, as a whole, this was a failure.
This did not work well.
We tried this.
It didn't work.
But we did learn that these couple of small pieces worked.
So let's try something different now with that information that we know.
And so we're always trying to get better, trying to use data to drive our decisions and really try to become the school district that
community wants us to be.
I talked a lot about education and academic achievement extracurriculars and sports were they considered any of this Steve?
Yeah absolutely that was brought up by the steering committee in numerous ways and I didn't go into reading each of the sublines of each of those pillars but within those pillars they want the students to have a good school experience to be able to be involved in things to be able to be part of teams and activities and those kinds of things so extra
is certainly a key component into shaping the lives of our young students and our students throughout and making sure that they have opportunities to grow and develop outside of the classrooms, but using all of it and tying it together to really just become good people when they graduate from Richland Center.
Steve Moore, our guest on the morning show will continue with more after these words.
Steve board is our guest Richland Center superintendent Well as we talk about we kind of recapped what we talked about in the first half of the show the hive mind and the findings and You know what the board is looking at but so what is next?
What's the next the step in the process
Steve?
Yeah, so again our administration is going to be working with our board putting this together on what our what our goals are and our measurements are as if they relate to the pillars
Um, how do folks stay involved?
Okay.
So, uh, there's a couple of different ways that this will happen.
One, the findings and the things that we're talking about, uh, at the board level will typically happen at our first, first board meeting of the month.
And so that is the second Wednesday.
So our board has two board meetings a month.
It's the second Wednesday of the month and the fourth Wednesday of the month.
For the most part, you get into some of those Thanksgiving Christmas and there's a, there's a few minor changes, but that's generally how it will work.
The first board meeting of the month.
which will be the one that we have or just had last week, I should say on the 10th, that's really more of a governance board.
And so that's really where they're talking about how to govern as a board and also where they will be discussing a lot of these things as it relates to results and student achievement around this strategic planning.
And then the second meeting of the month, which is the fourth Wednesday, that's really more of the action board meeting where a lot of the
Formalities get taken care of a lot of action will take if there's a policy that needs updating if there's things that need to happen So really that second Wednesday of the month will be a great place for folks to stay Updated continually of course if they miss that board meeting that's on our website on our YouTube channel And they can always go back and watch any of our board meetings for that matter
Additionally, with the help of Carrie Stoltz, our marketing communications director, we will be making sure that we're informing our community and certainly our steering committee and anybody who attended that Hive Mine event.
Most of them, if not all of them, gave us their email addresses and we're not going to use that for any other purposes other than to keep them informed of the things that are going on.
And so there'll be an email going out here shortly talking about many of the things that we talked about here this morning, but then we'll use that to keep
them keep them updated as well and so that's that's really where they're going to be done and then of course our website has that really won't be a source of information for things that are coming but it will be a great source of information for what has been done so in the near future and when I say the near future probably next week we will have a portion of our website launched where all of this information that we talked about all of the pillars of excellence along with the mission
vision and values will all be posted on our website, as well as all of the information that was collected during those two days at our Hive Mind event.
So every piece of information that was collected was recorded.
And so if somebody remembers saying something specific, if it was wrote down at their table.
it got recorded into this document and they should be able to look through the long lengthy document and they should be able to find the comment that they made as long as they ensured that their note taker at their table recorded it, it will be there someplace.
And so I think that will be really cool for our community to be able to see all of the different aspects and thoughts and components that were put into this thing and for us to be able to relay it in a very transparent manner.
and have it available for the community and really the entire world to see.
With a new school year starting before too long what's the latest as far as employment and hiring and how's that going?
Yeah we've had a really good hiring year fortunately we did not have you know a ton of openings as at least relatively speaking there have been some years where just the the stars align and you just got a lot of openings right people have moved or gotten out of the business or retired whatever it might be but this
year we had a relatively light load of openings we had a really great hiring initial wave there in March and April and then of course there's always that second wave of late resignations and folks that maybe are moving back closer to home things like that so we had this initial wave and then the second wave really all we have left right now we've got a few cross categorical special education teaching positions open
And so special education is a difficult field for us to fill as many school districts.
It's just there's just not a lot of special education teachers.
We've started a new initiative to try to help folks get their special education license.
So if there are folks that are interested in maybe trying spec ed, but didn't want to invest the money in going back to school, we've got a program that we can help with that and that we can incentivize them to try to get their
license and be part of our special education program.
And then we've got a handful of support staff positions open.
Those are ongoing throughout the year.
You know, it doesn't seem like there's many months that go by where we don't have an opening somewhere, right?
Maybe in our food service, maybe in our custodial crew, maybe in our classroom aid.
So folks are interested in being part of really a great school district with great people and really doing some some really great things with our students.
I encourage you to look at our website, give the district office a call, see if there's something that they would like to do.
And if someone is interested in looking at that special education option, they can certainly give us a call and we'll talk more about that as well.
But for the most part, our hiring has gone well.
We're excited about the new staff that we have.
We're excited to get them on board here in the middle of August and we're excited for them to get in front of our students and start making that positive impact.
What's the latest on the campus property?
I think we ask you that every time you're in here.
Yeah,
so okay, so I think I just kind of give a quick summary of what we've talked about in the past.
So the campus property, specifically Melville Hall, the gymnasium, the parking lots in front of Melville and the gymnasium, not the Simons lot that that's always wanted to stay part of Simons, as well as the green space, the athletics fields, if you will.
That was all going to be purchased by the
school district for for a dollar.
Well as we got into the surveying of that land because the county owns you know all of that acreage
We found out that a good portion of that land was under a grant by the DNR called the Loccon Grant, and it was a grant that was established back in, I believe, 1981, that basically said, we're going to give you money and you need to turn the space into or reserve the space as recreational space.
And so the tennis courts of Simons and the green space outside of Simons, that was all part of the Loccon Grant.
And of course, when it was all the campus, that was not that big a deal.
It was all owned and it was all used for that purpose.
But now the area that the school district was looking to purchase, when the surveying was done and we got ready to take the next steps, we found out that the Law Con Grant extended to areas beyond what the school district was initially willing or wanting to purchase, which was the parking lot next to Simons as well as the area that's by the tennis courts.
And so our first thought was we'll see if we can transfer that
land, the parking lot and the tennis courts.
I believe that that was in just under two acres of land.
Let's see if we can transfer the grant, put that land out of the grant and instead put the area.
South of brush Creek between the Creek and Highway 14.
None of that was part of the grant Let's transfer it to there and it will all be part of the school district's new property and all remain recreational And that's like 3.8 acres Well, the DNR said even though it's more acreage It also has to be of equal or greater value and they did not find that the the 3.8 acres of Really the swamp land if you will was of the same value
value or greater than that 1.8 acres of the tennis courts and the parking lot.
So there was an option to go through an appraisal.
We decided not to do that.
So now where we're at is that the county and the school district have verbally agreed that the school district can just take over.
everything that is encompassed by the lock on grant.
So that would be the parking lot that Simon's is on, the Simon's parking lot as well as the tennis courts with the idea that the county would remove the tennis courts and make it green space so that there doesn't have to be maintenance there.
And then we would get an easement for the county and the Simon's recreation center to be able to use and maintain the parking lot as well as responsible for snow plowing.
So it's essentially still remains theirs.
And so
So we believe that we've got the okay from the DNR.
That is jumping through a couple of the county committees.
right now they may have gone through it already and then next week on the 21st I believe it's going to the county board for approval of that revised offer and then on the 22nd of of July it will go to the school board to approve the same thing and both of our boards are are very well informed on what's going on here they've been involved along the way so we certainly don't see any any issues there Trisha Clemens has been been great to work with with
that as well.
And then after it's approved by the board, then because the campus property is within the city limits, the city has to approve any subdividing of parcels within the city.
It has to be part of their long range plan.
And with that being a really big piece of property, it wants to make sure that everybody wants to make sure that it fits within the city's long range plan.
So after it gets approved by both of our boards, the final step will then be
to go through the planning commission for at the city council level at the city level.
I think that'll happen in early August.
And then final approval will happen at the common council of the city.
I want to say September 1st, but it might be the last week in August.
And then we should be able to close on it.
So I think all the eyes are dotted and teaser crossed from a detail standpoint.
I think we've jumped through all of the hurdles and now it's just, you know, doing some format.
and going through all of the different boards, the county board, the school board, obviously to approve what's going to actually be transferred to the school district and then the city's involvement from the standpoint that that will be in the city limits or is in the city limits.
And so they're gonna need to make sure that they endorse the plan of that.
And so that will split the campus property up into really two parcels, one that the school district is owning, which if you
drive in the new bridge and really everything to the left of that new bridge all the way up to Melville the gym and then wrapping around Simons and then everything else Simons and all of the rest of the property both to the north and to the east will remain part of the county so the the CSM or the certified survey map will break it up into two parcels
Once that goes through the city as I mentioned then we can close the school district will then officially own that property and then this the city and the county they can look at what future development looks like for the rest of that property I think they're doing some demolition of the of some of the buildings right now
I don't want to speak on behalf of the county on what their plans are and things like that, but that's generally speaking what will happen.
So with that being really close to the start of school and possibly even on the first day of school on September 1st, one of the next internal steps that we will be doing is I'll be working with Ms.
Clements and we'll see if we can get some sort of an agreement in writing that will allow the school district to use Melville Hall.
We've already got an MOU to use the gymnasium and that's worked out.
great but really see if we can get in there to start using Melville Hall we might have to be put the pause and put the brakes on any renovations or remodeling that we need to do but at least if we can get some of our
Alternative learning spaces in there at the start of year.
That's much better than than trying to move them halfway through the year Not that it can't happen But I just think it'd be cleaner if we could just start them off in in that area on September 1st But I'm optimistic it'll all work out.
It's nice to see a lot of hard work finally coming to fruition and keeping a couple of those campus buildings remaining educational purposes and under the ownership of the school district and again, just very thankful
that we've got such a good relationship with the county and the city and that all three entities are really working together to try to make this happen and and yet protect the the long-range future of our of our community as well.
Well it will be super registration before too long won't it?
It will be super registration.
Super registration this year is on August 12th so that will be from one until seven o'clock that's it's a Tuesday.
Our community has gotten very adept at what super registration is all about.
Our families have gotten very efficient with it.
There's a lot of online registration and paperwork that can be done on the front end.
Expect that to open up around the 1st of August so our families to start to be able to be at home, log into Skyward, fill out some of that information, update their address, contact information, emergency contacts, medical needs.
allergies, things like that.
That's all a crucial, crucial part of our beginning of the year and back to school registration, as well as just general information about my kid needs transportation, but they only need it on Wednesdays when we have early outs or if there's a weather delay or a cancellation where we get out early in the school year, I need transportation, dietary restrictions, things like, are you okay as a parent with the school district giving your child
Ibuprofen if they've got a headache those kinds of things so those are all part of the forms that can be done and if parents can do those on the front end before super registration that makes super registration process very quick and easy for those parents and families by the same token if they if you need help or if you need translation services or anything like that
By all means, you are welcome to come to Super Registration and we will walk you through every step of the process and help you along the way.
There'll be food trucks available at the high school.
And then it's a great opportunity for parents or students to meet their principles, but also to get their school picture taken.
And that's been something that has been really good for our families, got really good feedback from them.
Instead of having to, you know, you and I, our parents would have, you know, spiffed up our hair, probably got a spit shower on top.
And then they send us to school in our good clothes and then you and I would go out and play football in the morning and then we'd come in and our hair would be a mess and we weren't ready for.
photos.
So this is one of the things that parents have really really appreciated is having the ability to get their children dressed up in the clothes that they want, making sure that they look appropriate, they don't have barbecue from lunch still on their chin, and they can get their picture taken.
Oftentimes their parents are able to watch and make sure because kids will often, especially the little ones, they sometimes can get frightened.
They can just make sure it all goes well and they get a really really good
school photo and I think our our school photos have really improved in quality specifically for that reason now if they can't make it to super registration we'll still have a time when they early in the school year will have a makeup day maybe the pictures didn't turn out like you wanted they blinked there was something that you didn't catch but you want them redone or if you just weren't able to make it to super registration there'll be still be an opportunity for that but August 12th that's a that's a big day it's really kind of our first formal school day
with all of our families and our staff and just a really, really exciting day to see 800, 900 people come through the high school gymnasium and get registered for school.
And last but not least, this is an anniversary year for the district.
You were telling me about that before we went on the air.
You had to do some research and figure all this out.
Tell us
about that.
Yeah, I'll give you a little background story before I give the spoiler here.
But about a year ago, we had a federal grant, part of the drug-free communities grant, actually.
And that was managed through a governmental portal called SAM.gov.
And with that, we had to register with this new portal and part of the registration process because it's not only school districts, but it can be private sectors.
Anybody can apply or manage or be a contractor of a federal grant or they can apply for it anyway.
And so when the school district applied, one of the things that we had to provide was proof
of establishment of what year the school district actually started.
And we thought this would be a relatively easy process.
It ended up being a very, very difficult process, but we were able to find the original board minutes handwritten in our, believe our public library.
And the first year of the Richland School District officially was 1876, which means that this becomes, as of July 1st, this is the 150th.
birthday of the Richland School District.
And so that's really pretty cool.
Of course, our high school was built in 1996.
So it's kind of our 30th anniversary of the high school being built.
But we're going to be doing some special celebrations throughout the year, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Richland School District in existence.
And I now have proof that that is when it happened.
And that's pretty cool.
It was pretty neat to see.
I think most people thought that it was around the 1912, 1913, because we did have
some information.
that focused on that as well.
But when we were able to go back and find the actual minutes, it was 1876.
So 150th anniversary to the Richland School District.
Congratulations.
That has to be one of the older districts in the state, I would think.
Boy, that is a great question.
And one of the places we actually contacted was the Department of Public Instruction and the state to see, do they have this information?
Do they have to register as a school district?
And you would now, but they did not have that information.
So that makes it very difficult to compare to see where are we one of the oldest, you know, maybe the oldest.
Are we in the one of the 10 oldest or are we just average?
I really don't know the answer to that.
But I thought the same thing.
We have to be one of the oldest.
Of course, we know things like we've got, you know, the nation's oldest marching band and some of those things.
So I have to believe just based on putting some of that together and extrapolating that, that we have to be one of the oldest school districts in Wisconsin.
Great.
Well, I know it'll be memorable.
Thanks for joining us today, Steve.
Yeah, you bet.
I appreciate it as always.
Have a great rest of the summer.
Superintendent Steve Bord representing the Richland District down this portion of the morning show.