District staff recommend removing several updated Second Step lessons from 2025–26 K–8 sequence

Erin Fells, curriculum coordinator for the West Bend School District, told the curriculum committee on Sept. 2 that an annual review of changes to the Second Step digital social‑emotional learning (SEL) platform led staff to recommend removing certain updated lessons from the 2025–26 K–8 teaching sequence.

Fells said the district’s board approved the SEL curriculum and Second Step as the primary resource for kindergarten through Grade 8 in 2021 and that, because Second Step is a digital product, the vendor issues updates each year. The district’s student services coordinator, Carrie Hughes, reviews every lesson each fall and the district aligns any recommended changes to its communication plan for families.

Why it matters: the changes affect lessons students will see in classrooms and the parent communication the district sends before SEL lessons. Families retain the district’s longstanding opt‑out option for SEL lessons, and principals will notify parents and provide access to the curriculum documents and the opt‑out Google form.

Fells told the committee that most elementary updates were minimal. Grade 4 Unit 1 changes were limited to small edits (for example, a lesson title correction), and the updates did not alter the unit’s learning objectives. In contrast, Fells said Grade 5 Unit 1 contained more substantial platform updates: the vendor replaced videos and characters and shifted emphasis from the district’s board‑approved goal‑setting sequence toward concepts such as motivation, challenges and habit formation. When the district team aligned those changes to the board‑approved curriculum, Fells said, they concluded the updates “moved away from the board approved curriculum substantially enough” and recommended those Grade 5 lessons not be taught in the upcoming year.

At the middle school level, Fells said most vendor changes were minimal and kept learning objectives intact. She acknowledged two redesigned lessons that the district had not included in its original sequence: a Grade 6 lesson the vendor calls “Soundtrack for Success” and a Grade 7 redesign titled “Designing Your Future.” The district will continue to use its locally created lesson “Who Can Support You” instead of those vendor redesigns.

Fells said Grade 7 revisions included small wording changes (for example, the vocabulary term “roadblocks” was replaced with “obstacles”), a few deleted handouts and a new video example highlighting an Olympic hurdler. Grade 8 Unit 1, she added, contained vendor changes that shifted the unit from identity/strengths toward motivation and goal motivation; those changes were judged too far from the board‑approved scope and likewise recommended for omission for 2025–26.

Fells said the district has updated its online SEL curriculum document and the family communication plan to reflect the omissions for the upcoming year and reiterated the existing opt‑out process, adding that “Parents can always call, and make that request as well and we honor that.”

The committee did not record a formal board vote on the staffing recommendation during the meeting; Fells described the recommendation as a staff alignment decision and said principals will send communications to families explaining the year’s SEL lessons and the opt‑out procedure.

Discussion points included how digital platform changes are reviewed, the district’s locally created SEL lessons, and how counseling staff will coordinate as the district reconfigures some grade spans. Fells said the counseling team and district staff will examine K–4 counseling alignment and consider impacts on fifth graders entering middle school as reconfiguration work proceeds.

The district presented the committee with the updated curriculum documents and communication plan for public review. No formal board action was taken at the Sept. 2 committee meeting; staff said they will proceed with the described omissions for 2025–26 and notify families through the standard newsletter and principal communications.