Sun Prairie administrators recommend waiver and ordered tie-breakers for Wisconsin Act 95 guaranteed-admission

Superintendent Brad Saron and Dr. Kurt Mould of the Sun Prairie Area School District urged the Board of Education to approve a waiver and adopt ordered tie-breaking criteria to implement Wisconsin Act 95the law requiring the University of Wisconsin System to guarantee admission for the top 5% and 10% of each high school class by GPA.

"This Act 95 is an imperfect law that has come to school districts across the state of Wisconsin, all 420 school districts across the state of Wisconsin, to narrow students in ways that public schools were never intended to do," Superintendent Brad Saron said as he introduced the administration's recommendation.

Mould told the board the district had revised its prior policy after July 2024 guidance from the Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance and the Department of Public Instruction clarified that districts "must always round down" and may not submit more students than the UW system allows even in cases of ties. "We were told by the Department of Public Instruction that [a lottery] would absolutely not be considered as an acceptable waiver," he said.

The administration presented counts showing the scale of the problem: "So, we have 340 students at East High School, 334 students, at West High School," Mould said, and described districtwide tie situations that create the need for tiebreaking. He reported 24 students tied with a 4.0 for top-5% consideration but only 17 slots allowable at the 5% level under UW guidance; after two opt-outs at the 4.0 level at East, 22 East students still tied and would require a tiebreak.

The district recommended the same ordered tie-breaking criteria at East, West and Prairie Phoenix Academy for the purposes of the UW guaranteed-admission program: 1) the number of high-school credits earned by the end of six semesters; 2) the number of advanced placement and/or dual-credit courses counted for high-school credit (including Early College Credit Program/Start College Now credits) at the end of six semesters; and 3) if needed, the ACT score from the junior-year spring state assessment.

Mould said the order was chosen to "acknowledge overall students' course load and minimize risks to students who cannot access the most rigorous courses due to scheduling conflicts" and to recognize strength of schedule and participation in electives such as fine arts and career-technical education.

As part of the recommendation, the district plans to include transcript notation indicating when a student would have qualified for top-5% or top-10% but, after tie-breaking, was placed outside that range, so that college admissions offices see the context for a student's rank. The district also described an opt-out outreach (counselors contacted qualifying students between June 11 and July 7) and said it will convene a representative group of students, parents and staff annually to revisit tie-breaking criteria for future classes.

Next procedural steps: the administration asked the Board to consider the waiver at its July 14 meeting and stated the district must then submit the waiver to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction for final approval. The administration also provided links to UW admissions FAQs and state guidance documents for further information.

The board meeting scheduled for July 14 will be the forum for formal consideration; the DPI must approve any district waiver before it takes effect.