Lauren Glassbrenner is in the studio with us today.
He is the administrator for River Valley Schools.
Hello again, Lauren.
Hello, Philly.
It's great to be here.
What a beautiful, beautiful autumn day they've given us to kind of play with today.
I love it.
Beautiful weather.
So nice to get up and see, you know, I wish the sun was up a little earlier.
You know, we're getting to the times where the sun is coming up a little bit later and going away a little faster in the evenings, but it's still this beautiful weather, those cool evenings in the sunny afternoon.
So it's a beautiful time to be a part of the driftless area.
That's for sure.
Yeah, we'll be changing that time before too long.
We sure will.
We sure will.
And that'll push us back, right?
No, we fall back in the fall.
And so that'll be something that everybody will get adjusted to and it'll be dark, right?
But.
We know that it all acyclicly comes back around.
So it is just part of what we do.
It's all good.
Schools all in session, right?
We've gotten through some of those first things, right?
You get through getting to school and getting everything unlocked and knowing your schedules.
And in River Valley, you get to homecoming, which is this bangbuster of a program that we have for a week long of fun.
And then after that, it's time to get to work.
So, you know, the sun comes up, you know, that there's work to be done.
No doubt.
The last time we saw you, you were hobbling around a little bit.
You're getting better.
I am
getting better.
Yeah.
So funny.
It's so inconvenient.
You know, as we get older, I just stepped funny and I had a little bit of an injury on the foot, but hey, I can still gather my sense and get around to the different buildings.
It's so funny.
Little people, as I go into their buildings, if I'm at the elementary school,
Um, everybody knows me as Mr. G because little kids have a hard time saying glass Brenner.
Um, so everybody says, Mr. G, Mr. G, what'd you do to your foot?
And I just say, I got old enough that I stepped funny and I broke it, you know, and they're like, it's broken.
I say, yes, it is, but the doctors fixed it.
So it's all good.
No worries.
It's
all good.
We plug on.
Absolutely.
Well, yeah, you had a good homecoming.
I know there's always, uh, so much that goes into that.
Lots of people that deserve some thanks on that.
Yeah.
In general.
As I sit here today, Phil, it makes me think back to my grandparents and it makes me think of those basic rules that you get as a kid to don't forget to say thank you.
And I am going to try today to focus on saying thank you to the so many people that are out that support the River Valley School District, its staff and its students.
Um, yeah, thinking of homecoming, the first people I want to thank are my administrative team, whether it's Carla Peterson or James Radke or Jamie Hegland or Darby Blakely.
Um, those four administrators change up everything to make sure that every kid is included in the homecoming celebration and the school fair, the school fair being part of our homecoming week.
And so
They work so hard to make sure that it's a safe and productive week for our kids.
So do I, my administrative team, they're just the best.
I'm so thankful for the work they've done.
And then we have people all across our campus that just dive in and help, whether it's Mr. Johnson organizing the parade and all the floats, whether it's a senior class officer kind of representative that makes sure that that float is ready and it's on somebody else's wagon and it's got a tractor to pull it.
whether it's the school fair, it's run by Shiri Grafunder and her FFA team, but also under the direction of my FFA alumni that have come back to the campus and have really organized that entire event.
It's all of those things during that homecoming week that come together for the celebration of Valley, right?
And so I just want to say thank you to anybody that was a part of that.
um and again my endowment board um is a part of the homecoming festivities and sells tickets and then we have these big prizes but that means a local business has donated those prizes so it goes door to door whether you're a citizen sitting there watching the parade or a business that's kind of sponsored a float or a teacher that's helped work all week to get kids to those things or administration or anybody I just want to say thank you.
Yeah, good, good said.
Um, um, the school board.
Yeah.
It's Wisconsin school board week, I believe
it was.
So last week, last week.
Yes.
That's for sure.
Every year we get to highlight and honor kind of our school boards.
And when you think of that school board's task, yes, they get elected to public office, but I don't think they quite understand until they're in a chair, what that public office entails.
Um, there are federal and state policies that are dictated that a school board has
to inherit and work with and so when they come to office they have to learn those policies and all those different things but then they've got to turn that into action for a district by hiring and keeping everything up and running and so I have an incredible team at the valley I have a nine member board which is kind of unique for a district our size right around a thousand students
it's kind of unique to have a nine-member board.
But that nine-member board has a lot of history in it because it was for little districts until 1962.
So there was the district over an arena.
or in Plain or in Lone Rock or in Spring Green.
And so when those four districts came together, they made it a point to make sure that there is a school board representing either the people in town, meaning the village, or the people that were in the countryside around that.
And so I have someone that
represents like the village of arena, but also I have somebody that represents the town of arena.
Likewise for Lone Rock, Spring Green and Plain.
There's just an extra one out there because the Spring Green, Plain, Bear Creek, Wyoming area is so big that we have a couple of board members representing that.
Either way, I think on the basis of that,
uh, our school board is a representation of the people of the community and from those areas that make up our whole district.
And I think that's pretty cool.
So they are voted in to represent a chunk, if you will, of the river valley area.
So again, I'm going to holler out their names, uh, Erin Mays for the village of arena, Pam Gauger for the town of arena, Jeff Meyer for the town of Clyde, Jenna Poad for the village of Lone Rock, Elizabeth Minnick,
for Bear Creek which is kind of over near Richland County near us and also the village of Lone Rock, Emily Beck for the village of Spring Green, Fred Yausley for a lot of the Salk County areas which includes the town of Spring Green, the village of Plain and the town of Bear Creek, Kylie Kate out there in the town of Wyoming and then John Beddinger for the village of Plain and those nine members are incredibly, incredibly respectful, well-knowledged and they jump into the school board work.
Every every month we have committee meetings that happen on Mondays So to be a school board member you have to commit to being Present and ready to do action for this governmental body the school district and so they have meetings on Mondays and they also have meetings once
a month on a Thursday.
Unless something goes Kaflui and we need to have more meetings and then they jump into those as well.
But really it's two to three meetings a month and to keep up on your homework to really make sure that you're understanding what's going on in the state so that I as their district administrator, I send them legislation that's coming through.
I send them policies that are maybe coming through and then we work on editing those or drafting those.
And so I work for them to get things ready for these meetings and then we work forward and make the decisions to make River Valley a great place
place to go to school.
When do they meet?
They meet on the second Thursday.
So it's not on here, but the second Thursday of every month.
We meet at seven o'clock at the River Valley Intermediate Library Media Center.
So we meet then and then Monday nights are in the same spot, but they're at five o'clock on Monday nights.
And those are committee meetings.
We have policy committee.
We have buildings and grounds.
We have a budget ERC meeting employee relations.
We have curriculum and instruction.
And I'm forgetting one and I'm trying to think of what, oh, we have budget.
So those five together really push together
and do a lot of committee meeting work on Mondays and bring it to the full board so that everybody is abreast of all the issues.
And then they jump into their action on those second Thursdays of the month.
Well, you've had tough decisions
over the last few years with your referendum and you had to close the school and kind of move things around.
Things quiet right now.
Is there always something happening?
Well, I would say yes to both.
It's quiet right now.
There are no big changes in the valley right now.
There are no big things out on the front that are making people upset.
at least that I've heard about today.
So that's good.
I mean, there's always something that we can improve upon and we try to look at those with a growth mindset and try to say, okay, what's the barrier?
How can we dig through it?
How can we fix it?
But beyond that.
This last summer, we fixed a roof.
Rather than moving schools, we did some basic things around the district that really were not dramatic, right?
The summer before, 75 out of our 100 teachers had to move because we consolidated to those three buildings down on the Spring Green campus.
So I would say it's calm, it's steady, it's back to that idea of we're doing the business based on what we need to get done, and again, with the thanks of all the people that are helping.
Big thank yous go out to your again your business community because they they believe in public education and the education that students are getting at River Valley.
Yeah so there's we recently highlighted some businesses at our local school board level and it was really interesting when you think about you know a school district you think about all the people that give back and so we get an opportunity once a year also to recognize five businesses and this year we really went out on a limb and kind of thanked our restaurant tours if you will.
We have lots
of tourism in spring green, right?
We're right there on the river.
There's a lot of people that count on tally us in or APT or house on the rock and all of those people have to eat somewhere, right?
And so we highlighted this last school board meeting
four out of the five that were at a WASB nomination level.
And so we highlighted the work of Arthur's Supper Club.
Chris and Brian Stoddard out at Arthur's Supper Club always are generous to our people that we have FFA banquets there.
We have once a quarter up, we have a staff celebration out there where the district buys or derves and everybody gets to kind of just be together as a K-12 team.
Also out at Arthur's though, they employ a lot of our parents and our kids, right?
So the common
theme that you're gonna hear is yes, they feed us, but they also are a major employer and they're always willing to
just jump in and help us out.
The next one we wanted to highlight was the general store.
And so we've got Karen Miller Ditmar, who is a great person that runs the general store there right in downtown Spring Green.
And again, she allows us to use the basement of a restaurant, which is set up as kind of a small little eatery.
We can hold professional meetings down there.
Our day starts at 730.
Her day starts at 10 o'clock, but she'll always open it up.
Make sure there's a pot of coffee ready.
Make sure that everybody's welcomed.
And so the general store
store is another place that not only employs our staff and students but also she's open to us using her space.
The third one is the shed which has kind of been revitalized in the last couple years which kind of has that beautiful Thursday evening tone in River Valley.
The shed is a great restaurant downtown in Spring Green.
They have open arms.
I don't even know what else to say except that on that day Troy and Jenny Day as well as Shannon and Nikki Stevens
They open up that restaurant and allow us to use it in any way we can.
And they also have the back, what they call the shed garden, which is, I believe it's an old bank that burnt down in Spring Green before I got their fill.
And then they turned it into kind of a community center right in the downtown of Spring Green where people sit outside near a stage.
They drink coffee and other things on Thursday evenings and watch local bands.
But again, that Thursday night,
Celebration just embodies community.
It has kids, it's got parents, it's got employees, and again, the shed just kind of has that open arms to make sure that River Valley feels welcomed into their space.
And the last one, which is really about tourism, again, too, is the Wisconsin Riverside Resort, which is also back in the day known as Schiflitz.
It's transitioned, obviously, to a new owner, but
Mackenzie and Tyler Barron's out there do a great job of taking over that partnership, and they allow us.
They have a great hosting center.
We have our national scholarship tonight.
We have out there.
We also have the National Honor Society, et cetera, and banquets out there.
So if you have a school banquet and you need to find a space that's not just a cafeteria, all of these spaces offer that up to us.
So again, to our local restaurants and to their owners,
Again, a big thank you.
We have to say thanks for when people go above and beyond to do what's right for the kids of the Valley.
So really highlighted those this last school board meeting too.
And in general, they couldn't be there without us and we couldn't be there without them.
And so it's this big idea of strong schools are built off strong community.
And we really want to make sure that we continue to thank the people that help us out.
Yeah, you're fortunate
because you have great eating places.
You have, you know, a grocery store, you have pharmacy, you have, you know, banks and bookstores.
Yeah,
spring green kind of is this.
rare little gem that's in the heart of our district that I'm thankful for.
You know, Lone Rock, Plain, Arena, they all have great things too.
I don't want to turn them down with anything and I don't want them to feel like their second best.
Just the center of our entire campus is in Spring-Green and so it's very easy to utilize that space.
And so we don't have to pay a lot of transportation costs to get to a lot of spaces if they're in that Spring-Green area.
So a huge thank you to the work that they do and we're really lucky.
It's a great little town.
Great employer too for people from all over, but Cardinal Industries.
Yes, Cardinal Industries will be recognized next month at our school board meeting.
You know, there's IGCGs, all the different Gs that are out there for Cardinal Industries, but they are very supportive of our district.
They also do great work and they're a huge business, but also like the Cardinal family is huge.
It's a regional leader.
So they are yet another great employer that really employs many of our parents without Cardinal.
We wouldn't have the jobs for the moms and the dads that we would have without them.
So again, they do great work for us too and their workers and we continue to try to find ways
to make sure that we're getting kids ready for these businesses.
If a kid wants to go into the hospitality field where they want to go into like running a hotel or running a restaurant, we want to make sure that those kids get the skills that they need in our public schools so that they're ready to get out there and do so.
Likewise for Cardinal Industries, if they need someone to make sure that they can measure the pressure on an incredibly advanced machine to make sure that the glass is coming out in the right way,
I need to talk to Cardinal and make sure that I have the kid prepped for that or getting them ready for the classes that get them ready for this kind of a career or job.
So we really look hard at apprenticeships.
We look at work placement things so that the kids are really getting ready for their next step.
We only get them for their first, you know, 18 years, if you will, and they don't start with us until they're five.
So I get 12 great years to get those kids ready, but then I've got to make sure they're ready for their next step.
And that's really a lot of this work.
And what every school district does to make sure that they're making those partnerships between the local businesses and their school district.
And again, just highlighting the appreciation and thanks that we have out there.
I'll say it a couple of times while we're talking here, Phil, but that TV, that wonderful machine that we have in our homes is so filled with political rhetoric right now and all the things about who's blaming who and who voted for what.
I'd rather just take this month while we get
ready for that big election to say thank you to the people that are truly helping us.
It's not rhetoric.
This is not about who's this or blaming that this is just a basic thank you to the people that are out there and getting all that political stuff off to the side.
Maybe put it in the barn cleaner and let it go.
Like get it out of here because it's it's definitely smelling it up and I just don't need it anymore.
I'm sick of it.
So I'm keeping myself in a positive zone and getting that political rhetoric out the other side.
Yeah, and it's refreshing to read some good news.
And earlier this morning, I got a little note that the Richland Center, Ithaca and the River Valley equestrian teams did extremely well.
You have to be proud of that team at River Valley.
Yeah.
I mean, people say you have an equestrian team.
like what is up with that you know equestrian obviously a horse um horse based team yes we have a couple kids that really enjoy that and so congratulations to them um but it makes me again go into great appreciation a little public school district whether you're the size of Ithaca the size of river valley or the size of a middleton cross plains
you have to become everything to everyone.
You want to sponsor the great things that the kids are interested in.
And so we have district affiliated teams.
We have school teams like our football team, right?
The Blackhawks.
But we also have school affiliated teams like this equestrian team that needs a sponsorship from our high school in order to be a part of that state association.
So we don't pay an equestrian coach.
We don't house horses on our campus.
We don't have a dressage class.
What we do have is the high school with the kids in it that are interested in something very equestrian based.
And so we, of course, say you bet we'll help sponsor that.
You can put our name down.
We don't incur any liability by doing that.
We just get to have that great celebration of the great things that are out there.
With that equestrian team, I don't think people understand sometimes the great things that we try to offer to kids, and most of this, I would say half of this, is free.
We may have to sponsor a club here and there, but some of this is free.
For example, well, we have FFA, right?
I'm gonna just go through a long list.
We have FFA, we have forensics, we have SkillsUSA, which is really based on welding and getting kids ready for CTE fields.
Mach Trial, which is around law and...
pretending to be a lawyer and a respondent.
We've got our high school musical and plays.
We've got a chamber ensemble, which is singing again.
We've got a student council that really focuses on leadership.
We've got a sad club against students against drunk driving.
We've got a Spanish club.
We've got a trap team.
So if a kid's really interested in marksmanship and really likes the clay pigeons and really wants to get better at that, we've got a trap team.
That trap team doesn't mean that we have a sponsored coach for the trap team.
That means we're affiliated
with that trap team so that they may be a part of the state conference for that.
Doesn't cost a district anything.
We have a yearbook club.
We have a river valley fishing team that goes out in the fall or does a lot of ice fishing because it becomes more available at that time.
So again, a huge thank you to our volunteers there.
Then we have your typical football, boys soccer, girls swimming, cross country, volleyball.
We have cheerleading.
We have basketball for girls and boys.
We have wrestling for girls and boys.
We've got
baseball, we've got fast pitch softball, we've got track and field, we've got boys golf, we've got girl soccer, but then again we have
also a powerlifting team so that if a team of kids wants to get together and just on a weekend go and jump into strong physical like weightlifting we have that and then we have our equestrian team and we're always willing and able to try anything new right so we're always trying to make sure that our little people our elementary kids are looking at all these opportunities and thinking hmm which one would I want to be involved in
Truly, what is really important to me is that when a kid gets toward seventh grade, they feel like there's something there for everybody.
So if I am a kid that really loves to work on the farm, but I have an old horse that I love to work with, I want to make sure that I continue with the equestrian team.
To a kid that really loves to go fishing with his grandfather on the weekend, jump in and be a part of our fishing club then.
I want to make sure that a kid is involved in one of these things based on the research that says,
If a kid is involved in an activity out of school that's connected to school, they do better academically.
So a kid that's just sitting at home, not engaged with any of its school community, those are the ones that become disenfranchised and then also often don't do their homework.
don't want to learn, don't want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and that is something that I don't like.
So we go through statistically every year to make sure that every kid has this opportunity, and if they're not there, we try to interview them and find out why.
Why are you not engaged with one of these great activities?
If they can give us a real answer like, I don't have time because I'm working, because we still milk cows, Mr. Glassburner, and I have to get home,
Okay, I get it.
You have to go home.
I truly respect that.
But if they say, I don't know, I just, I just want to go home and do nothing.
I want you to do something.
So come and get engaged in this.
So again, kids that are involved do better in school, not only with attendance, but with academics.
And I think that's really important thing that we try to offer to all families.
Indeed.
And I think sometimes, you know, you get a student in a group that maybe like-minded students and,
you know,
make some new friends.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
They get to meet
kids out of district?
I mean, think of kids in FFA.
They're not only looking at our local chapter, but they're going to regional meetings, and then they're going to statewide things.
And then because of Sherry Grafunder, they're going to the National FFA Conference.
Those are great opportunities where a kid comes to see their opportunity beyond our district.
And that's really important.
So Spanish Club, another great example.
just took a group of kids paid for by the kids, but they just went to Costa Rica so that they could have an incredible immersion experience so they could hear the language from native speakers.
That's an incredible opportunity to have your child travel safely with a teacher to a foreign country.
Again, paid for by the kids, not the district.
So we're sponsoring it.
We're organizing it.
The work is done basically by the kids and the parents to get the kids ready for it.
So we're excited by the great things that we offer and again to any of the supervisors, the coaches I'd call them, or somebody that's the adult in charge, if you will, of all these great opportunities.
Just again, huge thank you.
You do great things for the kids in the valley and we're really thankful for it.
All right, we'll take time out and come back with more about River Valley.
Lauren Glassbrenner in the studio with us this month and we'll be back in just a moment.
Lauren Glassbrenner, our guest representing River Valley schools here as we get into October a little deeper.
I know you had the first Friday of the month.
I should say the third Friday of the month people count.
How did you come out of that?
How did that look?
Well, the third Friday count is something that every school district has to do in the state of Wisconsin on the third Friday.
And so this year that happened as it always does and it brought forward the numbers of kids in seats and it does affect funding for us at some
time.
But really, the first of two official pupil counts took place.
And so ours was the 18th.
That was the third Friday in September.
And the results are there.
But I want to read just kind of where we were.
I started in River Valley.
I got hired actually, had the interview in 2019 and started in 2020.
So now I'm in my seventh year of the Valley.
The best job in the area.
Love it.
Love working at River Valley.
Couldn't be happier.
But something that the families around us have been affected by in what our communities are seeing in all of Wisconsin is this declining enrollment.
So in 2022, our pupil count was 1106.
And it slowly goes down, which we knew we knew it was going to slowly go down based on our applied population study that we had from the University of Wisconsin.
But by 23, we were at 1090.
by 24 we were at 1061 so losing about
25 kids a year.
And that's not based on a bunch of them leaving and going to other districts.
It's based on our population load being smaller.
Then we went down to 1,032 and 25.
And this year, for the first time, well, not the first time in River Valley, but since the 80s, we've been above 1,000, right?
The 1980s, well, in 2026, we are down to 954 kids.
So River Valley is becoming much more like
Riverdale, Fenimore, Lancaster.
They're not the big one in the conference anymore, where we had more children to pull from than other districts did.
So if conference size was something that's something that we try to look at, but it's happening in Platteville, it's happening in Prairie de Chine, it's happening in Dodgeville.
I know Mr. Copernol was just speaking about which counties are growing, right?
Dane County is growing, Eau Claire is growing a little bit, Milwaukee a little bit, or the edges around Milwaukee are growing.
Otherwise, the counties across Wisconsin
are declining and what that means fewer kids fewer families and it's just smaller families again Phil we talk about this a lot you know I was one of four right you were one of how many and you're one of two so you had a small family for a family farm right my dad was one of five my mom was one of six but you know farm families often thought of having a
a bunch of kids so that they could help out with the chores.
We don't have a lot of farm families and we don't have a lot of large families anymore either.
So populations are just different.
It's not a bad thing.
It's not disparaging.
It's not pressuring.
It's just reality.
So we're down below a thousand.
But it doesn't happen at
the kind of in a vacuum it happens in a planned way so that means by the next time we come back for referendum will be asking for stuff to happen in valley but for fewer kids and when I was talking before and saying thank you I think this is a great time to again say no matter if I have 1500 kids or 900 kids
the community is still being as gracious and filled with gratitude and being as generous as they ever have.
And I really appreciate that.
So I'm just out here again to say thank you for the great things that they've done.
We continue to push ahead so that my 954 kids get the best education possible in rural Wisconsin.
And I think that's incredible.
And we'll all work through it.
It's what we do, but we all just tighten our belt and try to make the best with what we do and make sure that we right size, if you will, we make
sure that instead of you know four sections of third grade we have three and to make sure that those kids get the same education the same quality just in a smaller size.
It's all good.
I just wanted to share that that Third Friday count is something that pushed the Valley kind of into a different space of under a thousand kids.
And for many of the graduating classes that come back and kind of do their class of, let's say, 2002, you know, reunions around homecoming, they have 150 kids that once graduated with them were down to in our graduating class this year, 80.
And that's about where we'll sit, between 65 and 80 kids per graduating class.
Yeah.
How many did you have in this most recent graduating class of 26?
101.
So
we are 21 fewer kids, not based on anybody moving out or anything.
It's just based on that was the last group of big 100 or more, right?
So yeah, we went from the years before that 90s, 102, 101, and then just dropped down to 80.
So, and we're right around the 80s and 85s from this point forward.
So it's just our reality.
It's a good reality to have.
We get to work with those kids in a special way like we always do, but it's just informing the public too that everything's a little bit tighter, a little bit smaller, and we all do a little bit more with a little bit less.
Dane County not being that far away from your district.
Do you benefit from that population growth in Dane County or not?
No, I would say pretty heartily.
No, we don't gain from that.
The only thing that we would gain is if the suburban sprawl gets out this far.
I would say that Middleton Cross Plains is gaining.
And then I would say some of Wisconsin Heights retains right there, but Wisconsin Heights is in a big district.
So if you're coming down the highway and you're in Middleton, you come out the highway and you're now out in kind of the cross plains, black earth that makes up in Meso Mani, those make up what they call Wisconsin Heights, that school district right after Wisconsin Heights, which is small.
It's just a corridor.
That district is bounced between Sock Prairie and Mount Horriba on the other side.
So it's really a tight district.
They don't have a lot of room for expansion.
or growth of housing, so they're gonna keep themselves in that K-12 building that they have right there between the two towns, then you come out to us.
The only thing that would grow is if we had a developer out in Arena, for example, that would put in...
I don't know, 100 houses.
Many of those houses would then have children in them.
Those children would then come to River Valley and it just hasn't sprawled that far yet.
So it's happening to other districts.
You can see like Sock Prairie, people go up the four lanes to get to Sock Prairie and they have some development there, but it just has not reached south.
It's gone up the four lanes to Sock Prairie and Baraboo in Sock County, not to Spring Green or to Arena in Iowa County.
You recently have had some grants you'd
like to talk about.
So again like when I talk about the great things that happen over in River Valley there's some incredible things that happen and many people know Spring Greens downtown for the Spring Green Arts and Crafts Fair that's been there for so many years.
the great people of that organization continue to give back to the community.
And so they put out this community drive for, okay, we've made money, but that money that we've made, we want to push back into our community.
And so they put out grant requests, and many of my teachers did that.
And so just a shout out to the teachers that wrote these grants, Becky Schinker, Whitney Bindle, Casey Maxwell, Nick Ellinger, Tara Johnson, all received grant dollars from the Springgreen Arts.
community craft fair.
And so the river valley just received $6,800 and then some from that.
We also have a very active endowment.
And what an endowment is, is where people can engage in investment, almost like philanthropy for a local district.
So it's a tax-free endowment.
So if there's any donations that come into our endowment, the River Valley School District Endowment, then the dollars directly come back to our teachers when interest is earned off that investment.
The endowment has up over $500,000 invested now with the Madison Community Foundation.
But from that, then there's $26,000
or more grants that come back.
So again, we just got grants back to that.
And so we're excited about those great things that are out there.
So I just can't thank enough for our endowment.
One of the great things that recently happened from our endowment, a crazy superintendent in a third grade group wrote a grant to have chickens.
Behind our school building and so we have the new happy hen house Which is a spot for kids to watch chickens grow right there's just four hens there because that fits the the village
kind of ordinance.
You shouldn't have more than four in a enclosed space, but we built a nice little chicken coop out there.
The kids, it's out by recess.
The kids don't have hand to hand contact with these chickens, but they can see the process of what it is to raise an animal.
So many of our kids in town now don't know what it is to have maybe a pet or an animal.
So the happy henhouse has four hens in it now.
And the kids are learning about the life cycle of birds.
They're understanding the origins of food.
And it's also like taking
look at sustainability really understanding that chicken refuse right whatever the
And result of chicken is, is that that can be thrown on garden.
It can make organic matter that can help grow vegetables, all those different things.
Uh, recently we had a teacher grab the eggs, took it back to her classroom.
The kids did a bunch of math lessons around weights and measurements.
And then they made brownies.
So they use these eggs from the happy henhouse into the brownie batch that they all measured out to look at fractions.
And it's a great way to make sure that things like that are there for us.
So again, to our endowment, to the people that sit on our
our endowment or if anybody wants to donate to the district, the endowment's a great way to go.
But in River Valley, it's all about community.
It's all about the great things that are happening and our community supporting the great things that happen with our schools.
Because we truly believe a strong community is built around strong schools and strong schools build strong community.
So it's kind of this reciprocal relationship that we just really want to celebrate and give great appreciation to.
Is there anything you want to add this morning?
No,
thank you.
Thank you to everybody that supports River Valley.
I'll even go beyond that.
You know, I always say it's the best job in the world, right?
It's a great district.
I feel so fortunate to be around the great people that spend their days educating the future of America.
But that's not
to say that that's not happening in Ithaca.
It's happening in Ithaca, in Weston, in center, in the Dale, right?
All of our communities that are around us are trying to do this great work as well.
So just be thankful that public schools are out there.
It gives the great opportunity to any kid.
Any kid gets the opportunity to walk in those doors and make the best of their life.
And without public schools,
We wouldn't have that.
So a huge shout out to all the public school educators and administrators out there and the people that work within those schools, but also that support those schools.
Thanks for the great work that you do.
We're very fortunate in Wisconsin to have these great opportunities for the kids.
Oh, we're fortunate that you visit us each month.
River Valley is fortunate to have you.
Yeah, we're glad to be here.
Lauren, best wishes.
The next time we talk, we'll be in November.
Yes, it'll be after an election.
The political rhetoric will be off our TVs and we'll be moving ahead with a big smile on our face.
Absolutely.
Lauren Glasperner,
joining us, River Valley Administrator here on today's morning show.