Board Update

Special Board Meeting - April 4, 2016 - 5:30 p.m. . (Superintendent Evaluation)

Board of Canvassers - April 11, 2016 - 4:00 p.m.

Ed Services - April 12, 2016 - 7:30 a.m.
Special Board Meeting - April 12, 2016 - 5:30 p.m. (Healthstat Contract)
Policy Review - April 13, 2016 - 5:30 p.m.
Human Resources - April 18, 2016 - 5:30 p.m.
Fiscal - April 20, 2016 - 5:30 p.m.
Board Meeting - April 25, 2016 - 6:00 p.m. (Board Reception 5:30 p.m.)

As always, please let us know if you cannot attend a meeting . . . Thank You!

This is a snapshot of some of the community events and conferences I am scheduled to attend this month. If you are interested in joining me at one of these meetings or events, please let me know – many are open to you.

List Schedule Here:

April 4, 11, 18, 25 Rotary Meeting

April 4 Advocacy Committee Meeting

April 6 Wake Up Watertown

April 7 Stairway to Heroin Meeting

April 7 Regional Superintendent Meeting

April 7 Branding Commission

April 8 Electrify Your Strings Concert

April 9 Spring Fling for the Family Center

April 11 Legislative Breakfast

April 11 Rotary Board

April 13 Bentzin Memorial Speaker - Sally Severson

April 13 Badger Conference Meeting in Baraboo

April 14 Library Board Meeting

April 15 Mad Rep Business and Education Collaborative Meeting

April 16 Children's Day Fair

April 18 Joint Review Board

April 21 Get Real at WHS

April 22 Staff Development Day

April 22 Jefferson County Interagency Collaborative Council

April 26 Eastern Region Advisory Community Group

April 26 Stairway to Heroin Event

April 27 Branding Commission

April 29 Dialogue for Student Success

The Watertown FFA Parliamentary Team and Chandler Zwieg advanced to sectional speaking contest on March 17 to compete for the opportunity to qualify for state competition in June. Chandler Zweig from Watertown FFA took third on his prepared speech. While Melissa Konkel from Big Foot FFA placed second and Braden Kundert from Badger FFA won the prepared speech contest. FFA members in the prepare...d speech contest must write a 6 to 8 minute speech about a topic in agriculture. They are evaluated on their ability to recite their speech from memory, quality of their manuscript and questions they answer after their speech. The Watertown FFA Parliamentary Procedure Team made up of Amalia Adrain, Brittany Rennhack, Alec Winkelman, Dawson Nickels & Natalie Siedschlag placed first at district and sectional competition. They needed to demonstrate 5 parliamentary procedure abilities and answer questions about parliamentary procedure to a panel of judges. They will now advance to state competition in June at the State FFA Convention.

Picture from left to right:
Back Row: Alec Winkelman, Dawson Nickels, Chandler Zwieg
Front Row: Natalie Siedschlag, Brittany Rennhack, Amalia Adrain

You are invited to attend the Mark Wood Concert at WHS!

Mark Wood, Grammy winner and original member of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Mark and his band will be performing LIVE with students from WHS on Friday, April 8 and Saturday, April 9 at 7:30 PM both nights.

While growing up in a musical family, he is a classically trained violist who received a 4 year, full scholarship to Julliard School of Music. While being highly trained, he also possesses a passion for the Beatle...s and many other genres of music. He is on a mission to keep students engaged in music and to broaden the scope for school programs. Throughout his career he has performed with Billy Joel, Celine Dion, Kanye West, and appeared in a Pepsi Super Bowl commercial. Mark is bringing both vocal and band specialists with him to highlight the entire school program. More information and videos can be found at www.electrifyyourstrings.com

$15/$20 tickets are on sale now at the WHS Receptionist office!

Riverside Middle School has been busy securing grants to continue growing our school garden. We have written another grant- this one awards up to $20,000 to install a roof water harvesting system so we can have a permanent, sustainable water source for the garden.

In order to make it through the first elimination round Seeds of Change is conducting a daily vote. Only those projects that have enough votes will make it to the final round!

That’s where you come in. Please login... to: https://www.seedsofchangegrant.com/GalleryDetail.aspx… each day to vote for our project. Please vote ONLY ONCE each day.

Voting starts 31 March and ends 18 April

Thank you for supporting this wonderful community project!

We would like to have our annual Board Retreat on May 3rd, 2016, beginning at 5:30 p.m. We will begin building this agenda. In the past we have used this opportunity to discuss the progress we have made on the strategic plan, set goals for the following school year, and reflect on other Board processes. Additionally, we have used this time to engage in some team building as a Board. Please let me know if you have any conflicts with the proposed date, and if you have any suggested agenda items. I will then work with Mark Putra to build our agenda for the date to make it as meaningful as possible.

The WUSD is hosting this important community event on April 26, 2016, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the WHS auditorium. Please consider attending for important information about heroin use and drug use prevention. Please see the attached flyer for more information.

Over the past three years I have represented the WUSD on the City Branding Commission. I am very excited to be a part of this process that I believe is a key to positive steps for our community and for our District. At the June Board Meeting representatives from the Branding Commission will be presenting to the Board about the work of the Commission and the implications for the City and the District.

We will be meeting with our attorneys and Healthstat's attorneys and Willis next week to work through the details of Healthstat's proposed contract with the WUSD. Based on that meeting, we will bring a contract to the Board for discussion and a possible resolution on April 12th at a Special Board Meeting.

We are very excited to be rolling out a program called Inspire Madison here in the District. We are in partnership with the Chamber and WEDO on this project as well as MadRep representing businesses and education in Dane County. This program will allow local businesses to connect with our students to share information about job shadows, apprenticeships, career paths, and job coaching. This will be used to help personalize our student's career pathways in the District. Our counselors and some of our administrators will be present for a presentation on this at Wake Up Watertown next week Wednesday.

Jesse Domer hosted a recognition event this week at WHS to recognize our donors for over $500,000 of contributions over the last 10 years to our technical education and engineering programs. The event was well attended and well organized, and it was great to see our students come back from area businesses to report the link between their courses here and their successful careers! Thank you to Jesse for all his work to organize this event and bring these donors into the WUSD, and thank you to our Board members who were able to attend the event - Mark Putra and Karrie Uttech. Eaton, Karrie Uttech's company, has made over $75,000 in donations over the past ten years!