District leaders report strong start to school year, curriculum rollouts and mixed assessment results

District curriculum leaders told the school board the 2025–26 school year is off to a strong start and outlined several curriculum changes and assessment outcomes that will guide instruction this year. "My main goal and my main role, really, is to support all of the K 6 buildings," said Amy Johnson, director of elementary curriculum and instruction. Nut graf: Johnson and Kim Shell (director of secondary curriculum and instruction) summarized implementation work on Illustrative Mathematics (K–4), Amplify ELA (intermediate and middle school), and Amplified Desmos math (grades 5–9), described screening and intervention changes tied to Wisconsin Act 20 and AIMSweb Plus, and presented preliminary state assessment results showing a modest district‑level increase in English language arts index scores alongside mixed mathematics and science outcomes. Body: Johnson described second‑year work to implement Illustrative Mathematics at K–4 with leader training, classroom modeling and a 75‑minute elementary block that provides time for core instruction plus small‑group work. "We have been providing a lot of professional development to the teachers," she said, noting the first year of a new curriculum often requires several years to reach full implementation. On reading, Johnson said the district is on its third AIMSweb Plus screener administration under Act 20; the data is being used to match students to high‑impact interventions and to scale effective fluency interventions identified last year. At the secondary level, administrators reported adoption of Amplify ELA and the roll‑out of Amplified Desmos mathematics, and described NextPath as a newly used district data platform. Tim (secondary director) said district ELA results across grades 3–11 showed a small increase in the share of students at proficiency or above and a larger rise in the "advanced" category, as reflected in the state index metric; mathematics was mixed with an essentially stable index; science showed declines in some cohorts, which administrators attributed in part to pandemic‑era disruptions for the affected cohort. Leaders identified current challenges: annual licensing costs for high‑quality instructional materials (with ongoing subscription/licensing expenses), maintaining and growing instructional coaching and intervention staff, and preparing for program moves tied to the new high school campus. Ending: Curriculum leaders will present more detailed grade‑ and school‑level data to the board’s curriculum committee in September and February and said they would continue to monitor screening data to align interventions with student needs.