District trails neighbors on pandemic report card

The Port Washington-Saukville School District exceeded expectations but scored second lowest among districts in Ozaukee County on state report cards that provide an indication of how students fared during the pandemic last year.

Three Ozaukee County school districts — Cedarburg, Mequon-Thiensville and Grafton — achieved the highest rating of significantly exceeds expectations with scores of 89.9, 85.8 and 84.7, respectively, on report cards for the 2020-21 school year issued by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction last week.

The Cedar Grove-Belgium School District achieved the second-highest rating — exceeds expectations — with a score of 82, as did the Port-Saukville School District with a score of 78.6 and the Northern Ozaukee School District at 78.1.

The report cards, which are issued annually except for the 2019-20 school year because of the pandemic, are intended to provide a means by which to compare districts and measure their progress, and the reports released last week provide a glimpse into student achievement during a year fraught with pandemic-related challenges.

That makes them of particular interest in the Port Washington-Saukville School District, which chose a novel and ultimately controversial approach to educating students last school year. 

While all other districts in the county started the 2020-21 school year with full-time, in-person instruction, the Port-Saukville District chose what it called a hybrid model. Elementary school students attended classes four days a week while the majority of students — those in middle and high school — went to school two days a week and learned online from home three days a week.

For the first few months, administrators said the approach was succeeding in keeping students and staff members safe from Covid-19 while providing meaningful instruction, but frustration with the system grew among parents and ultimately boiled over at School Board meetings in December and January attended by more than 100 people. 

Parents told school officials that their children were suffering academically and socially because they had limited contact with teachers and their peers and demanded a return to regular instruction.

The School Board capitulated, and students returned to full-time, in-person instruction for the start of the second semester in January. 

Two of the schools where students attended classes four days a week — Dunwiddie and Lincoln elementary school — significantly exceeded expectations on individual school report cards. The other schools in the district exceeded expectations.

Overall, the district slipped by six points from a score of 84.5 for the 2018-19 school year, which  earned it a rating of significantly exceeds expectations, although the DPI has cautioned against year-to-year comparison because several metrics were changed this year.

When asked if the district’s report card is an indication that student achievement suffered because of the district’s hybrid approach to teaching last year, Supt. Dave Watkins, who took over as the district’s head administrator in July, said, “It would be hard for me to speak to that because I wasn’t here and I’m not familiar with the type of instruction students received.”

Watkins, however, said the report card provides information that will be useful as the district works to create new priorities and improvement plans.

“It (the report card) aligns perfectly with our visioning process,” he said. “It tells us where there is opportunity for celebration and where there is opportunity for growth.”

Chris Surfus, the district’s veteran director of instruction, noted that this year’s report card measured the progress of the lowest performing students in a different way, which hurt the district’s score.

“Previously we had really strong scores in this area,” she said, adding that new intervention plans have been implemented at Thomas Jefferson Middle School and are in the works at Port Washington High School.

When asked about the impact of hybrid instruction last year, Surfus said that while it is commonly accepted that in-person contact students have with teachers as well as their peers is important, the district’s approach to education last year proved it is critical.

“I had a high school teacher tell me he didn’t realize how important teachers are in students’ lives, that you can’t build relationships over computer screens,” she said. “Now that students are back, we’re finding that we have to back-fill on things like ‘How do I work in groups again?’”

Referring to the decision to start last school year with a mix of in-person and online instruction, Surfus said, “The administrative team and the School Board really prioritized safety, and that’s the direction we went.”

The Grafton School District, which for a second time is the ninth-highest scoring district in the state, chose a different direction by returning students to classroom as normal last school year after the statewide school shutdown to end the 2019-20 academic year and relying on mitigation measures to stem the spread of Covid-19.

“We really believe that in-person learning results in high academic achievement,” Supt. Jeff Nelson said. 

Key to the district’s approach, Nelson said, was the fact that there was broad support for a plan that required cooperation if it was to succeed in delivering in-person instruction during a pandemic.

“We had a great buy-in to our belief in in-person learning from  parents, students, staff and really the whole community,” he said.

“This (report card) is really rewarding for the entire community.”