Five new school positions suggested

CLINTONVILLE – The administrative team for the Clintonville School District has proposed to the Clintonville Board of Education that the district add five fulltime employees to the district.
The proposal was made at the board’s March 31 meeting, and recommended the following positions be added to the district: program support teacher to be paid for with funds from Fund 17; one reading interventionist for grades 4K-5th grade and one math interventionist for grades 6-12, with both positions paid with funds from Fund 10; and two fulltime counselors for grades 4K-12, with both paid with funds from a Department of Public Instruction grant.
No action was taken by the board on the proposal recommendation, except for approving the addition of a program support teacher, which was a separate item on the agenda.
During the discussion, Clintonville Superintendent Troy Kuhn told the board that the district’s administrative team had been engaged in a needs assessment for the district, particularly what students need and if the district has the staff to support those needs. He said the assessment showed that the district needed to add 10 positions to meet it’s needs.
“I looked at the admin team and said, ‘I’m not bringing 10 new positions to the board, that’s not happening,’” Kuhn said.

After continuing to review the needs of the district, Kuhn said the administrative team wanted to inform the board about some of its findings, as well as solutions to meet the needs of the district.

Assessment findings
Madalyn Simonis, Clintonville Elementary School principal, said when she started as principal last year, the district had five fulltime literacy interventionists, but it currently has only three fulltime literacy interventionists.
“I went from having three at the elementary, down to just one,” Simonis said.
She added that the new curriculum is working.

“We see the data and we see improvements, but we still need to support our teachers,” Simonis said.
She said she would like to see the district add a reading interventionist.
Kuhn told the board that according to the data, there is a high number of kindergarten students who are proficient or above, but as they progress to 8th grade, there are less students who are proficient, basically not keeping up.
Clintonville Middle School Principal Britney Dobratz said the middle school does not have a math interventionist, but it had one in prior years. She said she would like to the district to add a math support position to work with grades 6 through 12. The person would be working with students in the classroom.
Scores show the middle school has a good report card, but Dobratz acknowledged that how the scores are calculated have changed.
“I don’t want to just say, ‘Hey, we have really good data, we’re doing great, lets just keep doing that,’” Dobratz said. “I think we need a 6-12 person to support all the kids, too.”
Clintonville High School Principal James Blashe added that the number of high school students in the district who are at a basic level or below for math is high when compared to other districts. He said the district doesn’t have any type of math intervention for high school students.
He added that some changes will be made for the next school year to get some help for students who need extra help.

Mental health
The administrative team also addressed student mental health and absenteeism.

Blashe said the district is averaging around 200 students being absent from school each day.
He said one recommendation would be for the district to have one school counselor for every 250 students in the district. He said the high school has 400 students and only one counselor.
Simonis said that when the district seeks counseling help from local medical organizations, it is virtual appointments only.
“We are grossly understaffed in our school counseling department,” Simonis said. “Two additional counselors would do our students a lot of good.”
She added, “It hurts us to put this data on here for you guys and our community members, but it’s the reality of where we are right now.”
Kuhn addressed the question of what happened to the positions that are being requested.
“The best and worst thing that happened to school districts was COVID,” Kuhn said.
Not sure of the exact amount, but Kuhn said he thought the Clintonville School District received an additional $7 million over a three-year period because of COVID.
“That money was dedicated not just for health and safety of students and staff, but also dedicated to catching kids up from the loss of learning because of COVID,” Kuhn said.
During that time, Kuhn said the district adopted a co-teaching philosophy. This had the district hiring special education teachers and paraprofessionals for every grade so co-teaching could take place. The district also had instructional coaches, as well as multiple interventionists at every level.
“When COVID money went away, it was, I’ll say, our job, to figure out who stays and who goes because we don’t have that extra money sitting there anymore,” Kuhn said. “We proved that it can work if we have the people. But without passing local referendums time and time and time again, we can’t afford the personnel to do that.”
He said the positions that are being requested existed in the past because of the COVID funds the district received.
“Now that they’re (positions) not here, we’re seeing that the need that they should exist again,” Kuhn said.