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Board to consider new course additions and multiple policy updates after committee reviews
Summary
The education committee recommended several course additions and modifications for 2025-26 registration and the policy and governance committee advanced updates including a head-lice policy, public-comment residency language, a purchasing threshold change, and consolidation of HR policies.
The Oshkosh Area School District’s education committee presented a package of proposed course additions and modifications for the 2025-26 school year and the policy and governance committee reported policy updates that the full board was told will be moved forward for approval at November meetings.
Education committee chair Dr. Herzog summarized four course additions the committee recommended: AP psychology (text cost about $4,500 for an expected 30 students), "TV and American Society" (a proposed elective examining post-World War II topics with an estimated $500–$600 annual streaming subscription), a ceramics course extension for higher-level student opportunities (minimal budget impact), and Spanish II for upperclassmen (no budget impact). The committee also recommended seven course modifications across agriculture and art pathways, an online driver’s-education classroom option, and a family-consumer-education offering through the UW system.
One course change was denied: a proposal to change English 4 to a mentor- and project-based course was not approved because committee members said the change was not cleared by the NCAA eligibility clearinghouse and could jeopardize students’ athletic eligibility.
Kim Brown provided the committee with an update on Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) and described planned surveys to check relevance and engagement: K–1 (paper) and 2–3 and 4–5 surveys for students, plus a 14-question family survey and a 14-question teacher survey to run in January and May, with accessibility for families who speak another language.
On the policy side, the policy and governance committee reported it will move five policy updates to the board on Nov. 13. Key items the committee described include:
- An updated head-lice policy submitted by school nurses clarifying return-to-classroom language when parents are notified but do not pick up the child. - A clarified policy 0171.3 describing board clerk duties to align with statutory provisions. - A revision to the public-comment policy (0167.3) adding explicit residency language: speakers must either live within the district or have a student open-enrolled in the district; the policy also directs speakers to announce their city of residence at meetings. - A purchasing policy update (policy 6320, aligning with 6325) to reflect a threshold change from $150,000 to $250,000. - Consolidation of human-resources policy series into a single HR series to reduce duplication and simplify future updates; the committee agreed to return policy 1260 (incapacity of the superintendent) for additional review in November.
Committee chairs said several items will come to the full board for approval at upcoming meetings. The policy committee set a special meeting date to return specific policies requiring more substantive language changes.
