Summer busy time for growing school district

As I write this column for the month of July, our summer school experience for our students has come and gone. Jill Resch, our district administrative assistant, deserves a ton of credit for organizing, facilitating, and directing this very involved and busy summer school program.

In addition to classes going on through the month of June, most all of our sport and music programs have camps, lessons, and skill sessions that occur throughout the summer.

Finally, not only are the students busy during this time, but our buildings are quite active for the adults, too, with summer institute training going on July and August. Many staff take advantage of the various opportunities afforded to them right here in our very own district that are designed to support their professional growth.

The office staff throughout the district is busy closing the books on one school year and planning and preparing for the start of another. In addition, at the school board level, we are working to address student population growth in our elementary grades, which continues to occur at a pretty steady pace.

This coming school year alone, we are adding an additional section of first grade and third grade at Wittenberg Elementary-Middle School to alleviate and minimize our student to teacher ratio. Kindergarten saw the addition of an extra section this past school year. I anticipate that within the next couple of years, we will have five sections of kindergarten through third grade and maybe even fourth grade district-wide.

With this added growth, we are working to creatively come up with physical classroom space to accommodate our added classroom needs. One option we are looking into is converting the current small Wittenberg Elementary gym into three new classrooms below with auxiliary space above that will still be able to accommodate many of the current activities scheduled in that location, such as assemblies, sensory breaks and after school youth wrestling practice.

There is much to be determined with this yet, but we wanted to make sure we were transparent with our intentions and the needs we are currently working through locally. As you can see, we really have a lot of opportunities and successes to be thankful for right here in our very own district, and this really is a result of competent, committed people and supportive families and residents that allow for these kinds of enriching experiences to happen.

In closing, I would like to thank Jill Resch, all of the teachers that committed to teaching summer school here at Wittenberg-Birnamwood School District, and our parents for allowing and encouraging your children to engage in these fun, creative and active experiences. Thank you to our staff in the trenches, who, because of the great job they are doing, have made Witt-Birn a great place to attend and learn. I hope you are all enjoying your summer months and look forward to seeing you soon.

Garrett Rogowski is superintendent of the Wittenberg-Birnamwood School District.