Sheboygan Area School District Superintendent Dr. Conrad told the board Aug. 20 that district pre-session activities emphasized academic vision, staff development and student supports ahead of the Sept. 2 start of school.

Leaders described the scope and outcomes of the district's early fall convening. Dr. Conrad said the back-to-school event included community partners and raised food and funds for the local food pantry. He highlighted the district's dual-enrollment partnership with Lakeland University and said district students earned more than $4,500,000 worth of college credit last year as a result of the program; administrators said participation increased sharply after fees were removed and that a far higher share of students now take the courses for college credit than previously.

"Before we started this partnership, about 30% of kids taking CAP classes were taking it for credit," Dr. Conrad said. "Making this free for them is just a huge deal. And now it's 90 some percent, 95% that are taking it for credit." (Presentation slides with participation numbers and dollar totals were distributed to the board.)

Staffing and professional learning: the superintendent said the district welcomed about 60 new teachers in orientation and that overall hiring is near capacity, with only a handful of vacancies remaining. He and other presenters stressed succession and "grow your own" leadership work, including an internship and coursework program that will place future leaders in internships and classes this year.

Instructional vision and implementation: Rachel summarized the district's revised vision and six programmatic priorities intended to align curriculum, social-emotional learning, evidence-based instructional materials, multi-level systems of support and professional learning communities. She outlined three implementation steps staff are expected to use: connect strategies to programmatic priorities, use data and evidence to make decisions, and assess expected return on investment before scaling new work. Rachel said the district uses key performance indicators tied to its long-range plan to monitor progress.

Student supports and community services: presenters cited districtwide services including the PATH mental-health program (more than 500 students served), homeless assistance (nearly 300 students and families served), special education (about 1,700 students served) and multilingual programs (nearly 1,800 students speaking 35 languages). The presentation also called out the district's wellness program and lower-than-peer insurance premiums as a factor in keeping benefit costs down.

Why it matters: administrators said the pre-session work is designed to unify staff around shared goals and improve consistency across 25 schools. The dual-enrollment numbers and scholarship totals were presented to illustrate student opportunity expansion and to show concrete results of partnerships.

Board reaction and next steps: trustees thanked staff for the pre-session work and for the dual-enrollment and staffing outcomes. The board adopted the district's formula performance goals by voice vote at the meeting. Superintendent and instructional leaders said they will continue to report progress on the programmatic priorities and key performance indicators through the board's regular monitoring and committee structure.

Ending: the board and staff said they are prepared for the first day of school on Sept. 2 and will use the coming weeks to finalize staffing, communications tools and implementation steps for the year.