Sparta Area School District outlines Act 20 literacy plan, demonstrates NextPath progress‑monitoring tool

Rachel Frazee, a Sparta parent, urged the school board to make literacy a top priority, describing progress her children made after receiving evidence‑based instruction and home tutoring.

Kyla Manske, a district staff member, presented a high‑level overview of the district’s draft early literacy remediation plan developed to meet Wisconsin’s Act 20 requirements, and demonstrated how the NextPath platform will support screening, diagnostics, personalized reading plans and family communication.

Manske said the district’s process begins with universal screening to flag students at risk, follows with diagnostic assessments to pinpoint areas of need, and then creates a personal reading plan for students who score below the 25th percentile on the screener. The district will use tiered interventions: tier 2 interventions delivered in the classroom for grade‑level skills and tier 3 interventions typically provided outside the classroom for below‑grade‑level skills. Progress monitoring is scheduled weekly to check whether interventions are producing growth.

Manske explained that NextPath automatically pulls screening and diagnostic data, generates a personal reading plan that lists who does the intervention, what it is, how progress will be measured and when, and can notify families by email. She described the platform’s dashboards and a color‑coded data wall (green/yellow/red) that teachers can filter for their caseloads. Manske said parents who receive a NextPath notification can “claim” their child in the system by entering their child’s birthday and then acknowledge the plan online; she noted that, at the time of the presentation, relatively few parents had acknowledged plans and she planned to send reminders.

In public comment, Rachel Frazee said she is completing Orton‑Gillingham certification and described her children’s reading trajectories: one child moved from being unable to read at the start of third grade to mid‑first‑grade level after evidence‑based instruction, and another reached grade‑level reading for the first time in fifth grade. “Early intervention is essential,” Frazee said, and urged the board to act with “urgency, diligence and fidelity.”

Board members asked how the plan identifies dyslexia and whether the district’s reliance on specific assessments and software raises funding or privacy concerns. Manske said one diagnostic component, RAN (rapid automatized naming), is helpful in identifying students who may have dyslexia, and that the same systematic, explicit instruction often helps students with different reading difficulties. On funding, Manske told the board that only the universal screener had been funded by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) in recent years and that most of the district’s other Act 20‑related costs are currently covered by local district funds; she said the district would continue the work if DPI funding for the screener ended but that broader Act 20 requirements increase the district’s costs.

Manske emphasized the plan is not finalized, saying the document is still being revised in response to questions raised after the second round of mandatory state assessments. She said the district will keep refining the flowcharts, family communications and the “Learning Together” resources on the district website that offer playful activities (chants, poems, games, Play‑Doh activities) families can use at home to support phonemic awareness and other early literacy skills.

The presentation included data context: the district’s Achievement Gap Reduction (AGR) goal—80 percent of students will make typical growth on the i‑Ready diagnostic in reading and math by year end—and examples of teacher dashboards showing students’ progress toward individualized goals.

Manske said family communications for initial screening notifications are sent via the district’s Skylert/Skyward contact system and that NextPath will generate targeted emails when a personal reading plan is created. She also described accommodations and guidance for students with IEPs and for English learners and said the plan documents how teachers should use NextPath to record interventions and monitoring results.

The district will continue to solicit questions from staff and families as it finalizes the plan and will submit required documentation to the DPI for review where Act 20 requires state oversight.