Orchard Lane principal cites gains for students with disabilities and spotlights individual progress

Royce Lindner, principal of Orchard Lane Elementary School, told the School District of New Berlin board that school staff have focused this year on improving outcomes for students with disabilities through targeted team reviews and interventions.

Lindner described school‑level goals embedded in student learning objectives and cited indicator targets used to measure progress: "The numbers you see before you, the 77% for numeracy and 82% for literacy," he said, noting these figures came from running current indicators against last year’s numbers to set realistic growth targets. He outlined regular Multi‑Level System of Supports (MLSS) meetings every six weeks, the role of student learning assistants and other staff, and how intervention decisions are made.

Lindner and staff highlighted specific measures: in a school of about 460 students, 36 qualified for literacy intervention this year, and 13 of those exited intervention during the year. He said roughly 75% of students with disabilities in grades K–2 had already met the required indicators for the school goal, and that 91% of K–1 students were at or above benchmark on an early math measure.

Staff then presented individual student spotlights. A speech‑language pathologist and classroom teacher described two years of work with a kindergarten‑entry student whose intelligibility increased from an estimated 10–33% to 80–95% by first grade after frequent interventions and targeted goals. Teachers described another fourth‑grade student who graduated from special‑education services and is now performing at grade level in reading, and a fifth‑grade student whose confidence and math achievement have improved markedly.

The board thanked staff and students for the presentations. The item was informational; no board action was taken during the presentations.