Sun Prairie School Board recognizes 'week of the young child'

The Sun Prairie Area School District’s community has approximately 2,200 children under the age of 5. The district’s 4-year-old kindergarten program (SP4K) enrolls an average of 500 students per year. Around one-quarter of these students receive special education services and 6% are identified as living in poverty.

“High quality early care and education can help ameliorate the effects of poverty, detect and remediate developmental delays, identify and help prevent child neglect, and lead to positive outcomes for individual children, helping them be better prepared for school and more likely to succeed in life,” the proclamation reads.

In addition, the proclamation addressed the importance of having an early education workforce that reflects a rich diversity of linguistic, racial and cultural identities and is appropriately financially compensated.

“Young children need skilled, educated, competent, consistent and compensated early childhood educators,” the proclamation reads.

District communications standards ‘in compliance’

Operating Expectation (OE): 3 Treatment of Community Stakeholders, OE: 8 Communicating with the Board and OE: 9 Communicating with the Public were found to be in compliance with the board standards.

Despite being in compliance with all measures, SPASD Communications Director Patti Lux offered areas of improvement.

“Through the work of the three-year communications plan, we will continue to seek ways to build relationships and involvement with our careholders, ensuring that non-dominant voices are included and heard,” the OE: 3 report said.

All measures were also in compliance for OE: 8.

“The Board of Education expects information to be provided in a timely manner and expects the superintendent to report non-compliance with governance policies,” the OE: 8 report said. “The board expects that matters related to board business be communicated consistently. The board expects that information and documents for posted board meetings be distributed equally.”

Also, the report added that neither the superintendent nor the board president have received formal notification from any board members of a breach in expectations for the 2021-22 monitoring year.

In OE: 9, the district was found to be in compliance with both measures of communication with the public:

Proactively share district information and provide a way for the public to provide input (two-way communication) about the direction of the district.

Annually prepare and make publicly available information about the district’s progress towards accomplishing Results policies.

“The district offers a variety of communication in a strategic and timely way with methods including through social media, Next Door, the district website, school websites, newsletters, press releases, printed community/school calendar, annual report, podcast, newsletters from school sites and more,” the EO: 9 report said.

The report offers areas for improvement, such as continuing to seek ways to engage non-parents and the 60% of the community that don’t have any children. The communications team is also working on equity practices like making documents and all materials easily translatable into Spanish.