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Eisenhower students, staff highlight literacy gains, expanded arts and athletics
Summary
Eisenhower High School administrators and students presented winter assessment gains for lower-performing readers and described growth in co‑curricular programs including orchestra, DECA and athletics during the School District of New Berlin board meeting.
Administrators from New Berlin Eisenhower High School told the School District of New Berlin Board of Education that targeted interventions produced measurable gains for students who began the year well below benchmark, and they highlighted expanding co‑curricular participation and arts programming.
Principal-designate Matt Buckley introduced a senior student, Claire, who described her six-year experience at Eisenhower and credited the school’s elective and advanced coursework — including AP classes and broad extracurricular options — with preparing her for college. "Eisenhower has taught me the importance of excellence, friendships, curiosity, and commitment," Claire said.
Assistant Principal Andrew Gerlach told the board that winter reading-screener results showed growth among students who were below the 20th national percentile in the fall: 57 students were below that threshold in fall testing, and 31 of those students showed individual improvement by winter; the group’s average score rose from roughly the 16th percentile to the 21st percentile. Gerlach said the district monitors both ends of the performance spectrum and noted a drop of about 10 percentage points in the number of students scoring in the advanced range (about the 70th percentile and above) from fall to winter.
Kevin Fitzgerald, Eisenhower’s activities director, described steady or improving extracurricular participation. He said the orchestra program has grown to about 140 student musicians and highlighted a community concert (scheduled for Thursday, March 13) and a summer orchestra camp. Fitzgerald listed recent competitive successes across multiple sports and activities, including state and sectional qualifiers in soccer, cross country, volleyball and wrestling, and noted that DECA sent 28 qualifiers to state with seven advancing to international competition.
Buckley also described classroom innovations: English teachers are addressing gaps in morphology with whole-class units, and teachers are intentionally putting more challenging texts before students to increase rigor. He said teachers are working to change instructional habits based on diagnostic data. The school is also piloting AI‑assisted assignments in English 9 to teach students how to use generative tools responsibly; Buckley described an assignment in which students generated images aligned with vocabulary terms and then reflected on the prompts and edits they made.
The administrators invited questions from board members; none prompted substantive changes to the material presented. Eisenhower’s presentation concluded with recognition of staff achievements and student awards and a reminder of upcoming events.
Eisenhower’s presentation was one of several school-based reports the board received that evening.
