Thursday, February 6, 2025

Student absenteeism lowers Oconto Falls’ school report card scores

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OCONTO FALLS – The Oconto Falls School Board discussed the school district’s state report card, chronic absenteeism, bus driver pay increases and referendum-project progress at its Jan. 13 meeting.

The board also held a lengthy closed session to discuss, among other issues, recruitment.

The school board has hired executive search firm McPherson & Jacobson LLC to assist in identifying a successor to Superintendent Dean Hess, who has led the district’s administration for about the past 10 years. The board hopes to have a new superintendent in place in July.

“The ideal candidate will champion student engagement, foster a love of learning, and ensure that every student feels valued and supported,” the job description said.

The board spent a large portion of the Jan. 13 meeting hearing a presentation on the school district’s performance as measured by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s school accountability program.

The school district’s overall rating on the state’s school report card was “meets expectations,” said Heather Kangas, director of teaching and learning. The district received a score of 67.7, based on a complicated formula that gave more weight to student growth scores from one year to the next than actual achievement scores. Absenteeism rates also were considered.

In comparison, Crivitz School District’s overall score was a 75.1. They were nominated for the national Blue Ribbon School program for closing achievement gaps.

Lena School District’s overall score was 61.2. Marinette School District’s overall score was 56.3. Peshtigo’s overall score was 60.5, Oconto United’s was 57.1 and Wausaukee’s was 60.4, according to DPI’s website.

Lingering issues stemming from Covid-19 contributed to higher absentee rates for several of the years the DPI program considered, board members said.

In a presentation to the board, Kangas explained the DPI adjusted cut scores and categories of learning from previous years. The school report cards were released in November with unofficial data from 2023-24 and official data from the prior three years.

“DPI explained there was a recalibration and so, because of these changes, the DPI advises that we should not compare our report cards this year to last year’s,” Kangas said.

According to DPI’s website, four categories were considered to determine the Oconto Falls’ overall “meets expectations” rating. For school districts with a sizable percentage of economically disadvantaged students, growth from year to year is weighted more heavily than achievement.

With about 35% of its Oconto Falls’ enrollment falling into the economically disadvantaged category, the district’s overall report card was assigned the following “priority area weights” achievement accounted for 23.1% of the overall score, while growth accounted for 26.9%, target-group outcomes accounted for 25% and on-track to graduation accounted for 25%.

The district’s overall score for 2023-24 was 67.7, while its score for 2021-22 was 68.7 and for 2022-23 was 68.4.

Within Oconto Falls School District, Abrams and Washington schools both received “exceeds expectations” scores with Abrams attaining a score of 77.1 and Washington receiving a score of 70.6.

Chronic absenteeism rates at Oconto Falls schools are on a downward trend after rising during Covid-19 to 18.5% in 2021-22, Kangas said.

“We’ve peaked with our chronic absenteeism,” Kangas said. Students are considered chronically absent if they miss more than 10% of the scheduled school days, she said. “We want to see that number get smaller and smaller.

You can see that over the last two years that it has been decreasing,” she said.
For the purposes of calculating the report card, the state used the past three years, including the district’s highest year of absenteeism, she said.

Covid-19 played a role, said Board Member Carrie Hill. “It’s that balance. I think we’re seeing it in our workforce, too, where prior to Covid maybe we risked coming to work if we had the sniffles and such. But now I think we’re staying home a little bit more than we were prior to Covid.”

A chart showed absenteeism rates for the district and each of the individual schools over the past four years. In 2023-24, the district’s unofficial rate of chronic absenteeism was 9.3%, compared with 4.5% in 2019-2020, 10% in 2020-21 and 12.5% in 2022-23.

In 2023-24, Oconto Falls High School had the highest absenteeism rate in the district at 11.9%, an improvement from 17.5% in 2021-22, while Oconto Falls Elementary School had the second-highest rate at 10.2% in 2023-24, down from 23.8% in 2020-21.

While the school district has seen improvement, Hess said, parents also play a part. “This is an area where we really need the support of our families, our parents and the community to help to encourage others as well,” Hess said.
Board member and Treasurer Ginny O’Harrow said she agreed with Hill that Covid increased concern about spreading germs. “It has shifted, that thought of going to school or work sick, and I don’t know that we should encourage going to school or work sick,” O’Harrow said.

Hess said he has received feedback about the district’s Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks from a couple of schools but wants more input. “We received good and bad feedback, so we want to get some data to maybe make a decision on what we do for the next calendar,” Hess said.

Absenteeism scores also affected on-track to graduation scores, which consider chronic absenteeism, graduation, 3rd grade English Language Arts and 8th grade math scores, Kangas said. “We did see improvement this year on our state assessment scores for English Language Arts for 3rd graders and math for our 8th graders, but despite the improvement on those scores, our overall score for ‘on track to graduation’ went down due to our scores for chronic absenteeism,” she said.

“Growth is calculated by looking at the way students progress from year to year on the state assessments. They really try to compare apples to apples so they take students that are in the same demographic group and take a look at how they performed on the previous year’s assessment,” she said. Students who score higher than this peer group receive a higher growth score.

To improve students’ scores, the school district has provided professional development support for teachers. All teachers, from kindergarten to grade 12, are provided literacy-focused professional development. Besides this, an English Language Arts intervention course was added at the high school.

“We’re looking for every one of our students to realize their potential,” Hess said.

He gave teachers credit for working on professional development and aligning curriculum to the assessments. “They’re busting their tails to try to do this,” Hess said. “It’s truly a team effort…but any help that we can get from parents is greatly appreciated,” he said.

In response to a board member’s question about the impact of Covid-19 on student performance, Kangas said, “We are absolutely still seeing impacts from the Covid years, as in thinking about certain cohorts of students and where they were in their learning during that Covid time. But I also see that teachers and our leadership, they’ve been doing so much work and trying different things to close those gaps.”

The Oconto Falls School Board agreed to boost entry-level pay to $27 per hour for school bus drivers effective this week. Pay rates rise to $28 per hour for drivers with six to 10 years of commercial driving experience and to $29 an hour for drivers with 11 or more years of experience. Pay for van drivers without CDL licenses is $23 per hour.

“It was really awesome to hear everybody start out their feedback with ‘I really love my job; I love driving a bus for Oconto School District,’ so I think that’s an awesome reflection of everybody making sure that the bus drivers feel supported,” Hess said.

Oconto Falls School Board, School District state report card, chronic absenteeism, McPherson & Jacobson LLC, Hess, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

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