Board workshop narrows district-level KPIs, focuses engagement metrics on 'reach'

The Oshkosh Area School District board spent much of its June 24 meeting in a workshop aimed at narrowing the district’s long list of performance metrics to a focused set of governance-level key performance indicators (KPIs).

Superintendent Davis told the board the goal is to reduce 19 existing measures to roughly seven to nine district-level indicators that give “a broad view” of system health across four core areas: student growth and achievement, culture and safety, stakeholder engagement, and finance and operations. “We want indicators that represent the health of the system,” Davis said.

Board and staff discussion centered on several practical questions: aligning growth and proficiency so that expected year-to-year gains map to proficiency targets, choosing an operating‑fund‑balance metric to track fiscal health, and handling the nuance of staff turnover (some turnover is normal and can be healthy). A staff member on the discussion urged the board to define both monitoring indicators and where the board expects specific, achievable targets.

On stakeholder engagement, communications director Katie urged a shift from one-time opinion measures toward metrics that show whether district messaging is reaching the community. Katie said analytics from the district’s newsletter platform provide a starting point: “A monthly district update recently garnered about a thousand clicks in a community of roughly 35,000 households — that shows we can improve reach,” she said. Katie recommended establishing tracking for reach (opens/clicks) and building a key‑communicator network to amplify and gather feedback from the community.

Board members pressed staff on how measurable culture indicators could be collected at scale. Davis and staff said student sense of belonging could be measured with existing instruments (the SABERS subset was mentioned) and then reported at an aggregate district level while building disaggregated measures at school and classroom levels for operational use.

Board member Molly asked for clarity on how these KPIs differ from the existing strategic plan; administrators responded that the new format is intended to be a governance dashboard for high‑level monitoring while operational departments would continue to collect more detailed, building‑level data and action plans. Officials said a follow‑up workshop in July will present proposed KPI definitions and draft targets, along with responsibility assignments and timelines.

The board did not take formal action on targets at this meeting; staff will return with more detailed metric definitions and recommended thresholds for board consideration.