Director Luke Lingo opened the operations meeting by asking the committee to approve minutes from April 8 and then turned the panel to the district’s activities report, which examined middle- and high-school participation in athletics and fine arts and identified gaps in data and access. Executive Director Ptacek Lucas and District Activities Director Tanisha led the presentation and described both what the district can measure now and the changes they plan to make to get more accurate, actionable numbers.
The presentation summarized two school years of participation data and stressed that the district’s current counts mix unique students with total activity occurrences. "These are unique head counts and not duplicative," Executive Director Ptacek Lucas said when clarifying how the district currently reports some figures. Tanisha, the district activities director, said the district lacked reliable free-and-reduced-price-lunch (FRL) data tied to activities and described plans to improve entry of activity rosters into the student information system to enable better demographic and equity analysis.
Why it matters: district leaders said extracurricular involvement supports attendance, social connection and mental health, and they flagged equity and retention as priorities. Tanisha said better data will help staff find students who are disengaged and connect them to activities: "When kids are in activities and involved in something, they just do better in school," she said. The presentation cited roughly 3,011 documented athletics occurrences and 3,092 fine-arts occurrences for high schools in the most recent year but cautioned those figures track activity instances rather than unique students.
Key findings and context: presenters said participation rose nationally after COVID and noted the district needs to sustain high‑quality, school-centered offerings and broaden options beyond traditional sports. The report compared building-level participant demographics with district enrollment and observed that while the district’s high-school enrollment is just over 50% white, about 68.2% of recorded activity occurrences were identified as white—an apparent disparity the district said will require better data to interpret.
Data and systems changes: district leaders committed to moving away from manual, coach-reported tallies and toward consistent entry of participants in Infinite Campus so records can be matched to student IDs and demographic fields. Tanisha said she will check activity entries and push athletic directors to use the system. She said a target participation rate of 70–80% across activities is ambitious but reachable as clubs and nontraditional activities are added.
Access, costs and supports: the group discussed barriers beyond data—transportation, out-of-school club competitions, private lessons and summer activities that can make public-school participation harder for some students. A commenter noted that some students stop participating if asked to take private lessons; another said local club sports often overlap with school programs. Leaders said transportation is largely parent-dependent; previous shuttle experiments did not appear to be the primary barrier. The district described booster clubs, the district foundation and ad hoc fee-waiver practices as current ways to reduce cost barriers, and staff said they will look for more systematic approaches to ensure fees and camps are not a barrier.
Facilities and retention: presenters tied planned facilities upgrades under the district’s facilities master plan (FMP 2.3) to recruitment and retention for activities, and emphasized matching staff resources—coaches and sponsors—to growing student interest so students receive adequate coaching and supervision. The presenters also highlighted fine arts as a large participation driver in some schools (for example, spring theater and marching band) and noted the district requires sixth graders to take music per Chapter 12 requirements, which affects middle-school fine-arts counts.
Next steps and actions: the district asked athletic and activities directors to ensure activities are entered into Infinite Campus; Tanisha and district staff will audit and improve data collection practices; buildings were encouraged to document club and non-athletic activities so the district can count them in future reports. Director Lingo and presenters did not propose any new budget appropriation during the meeting; staff said instrument replacements are planned through the district lifecycle budget for musical instruments and that, at the time of the meeting, additional money had not been requested.
Ending: committee members and attendees praised middle- and high-school programs and suggested continued follow-up on access barriers, instrument inventory, and clearer reporting so the district can track attrition from grade to grade and design interventions where needed.