New Berlin board leans on 'Great on Their Behalf' as it refines 2025–26 goals

The New Berlin School District Board of Education met for a work session and spent most of the hour discussing the book Great on Their Behalf and how its guidance should shape the board’s mission, vision and goals for the 2025–26 school year.

Board members said the single clearest takeaway was that student outcomes should drive the board’s agenda. "Focus on student outcomes in everything we do," one member said during the discussion, and several others agreed that measurable results should guide goal-setting and monitoring.

Members debated trade-offs between concentrating on academic outcomes and accounting for community priorities. One participant said the book seemed to under-emphasize budgeting and broader community inputs; another noted the author’s guidance that roughly half of board time should be on student learning and the other half on community values and operations, including finances and transportation.

The board reviewed guardrails it adopted last year — limits on administrative changes without board consultation, a requirement to notify the board of legal issues tied to hiring or promotions, and a stated reluctance to use consolidation or referenda as default cost-containment measures — and discussed preserving those guardrails while aligning goals to student outcomes.

Board members weighed whether to hire outside coaches endorsed by the book's author. The chair described a certified-trainer model that brings external facilitators to districts; members were split on whether formal coaching is needed given improvements the board has already made in writing SMART key results.

On monitoring cadence, the chair proposed a brief monthly status check; others pushed back, calling monthly too frequent and suggesting quarterly or every-other-month check-ins that would spotlight leading indicators for long-term targets such as ELA, math and PreACT growth. One member suggested publishing goal results and supporting artifacts on the board dashboard or the public boards page so the community can see progress.

Members also briefly discussed the district vision’s language, which references a "global society." Some suggested adding explicit mention of U.S. civic preparation alongside global readiness; others said the global language reflected employer feedback and the district’s work on career and life readiness.

The session closed with procedural housekeeping: the board scheduled another meeting next month to finalize key results for 2025–26. A motion to adjourn was made and seconded; a hand vote was called but the transcript does not record the final tally.

No formal votes on policy, budget or personnel were recorded in the transcript of this work session.