001Hi, I'm Brad Sarin, superintendent of the Sun Prairie Area School District. Here to present at the Board of Education and the community our monitoring report for operational expectation 9, communicating to the community. Remember this covers the 2024 2025 school year and will be monitored by the board of education for our compliance with their expectations expressed and expressed in their operational expectation for communicating with the public. We are here to present uh three basic areas as compliant to the board of education with artifacts associated with each one of those those areas including um two-way establishing two-way dialogue in which case we've got uh the artifacts uh an expanded list of artifacts that we're really proud of this year for uh uh the two-way dialogue with our public. We also have strategic communications to build support and
002understanding and then also um uh our efforts to communicate to our public the district's progress not only including the results policies that the board has but also our our financial progress. And so from here I'm going to turn it over to Patty to go into more detail on this operational expectation. Thank you. >> Thanks Brad. Hi, I'm Patty Lux. I am the director for communications and engagement for the school district and I'm bringing forward operating expectation 9 which is communicating with the public. So our strategic plan which is collaboratively created with our community has a goal a pillar and a goal of culture of engagement and inclusion. And within that there's the communications and community engagement goal talking about how we will excel in how we collaborate and communicate with our community and that that's
003an expectation. And so operating expectation 9 will will address this. And so we're bringing OE9 to you in compliance. There are three measures within it. And we are saying that all are in compliance. And just wanted to ground you in what the three uh three summary basically a summary of the three things that we are measuring within that. And one is how we share information with our district. The other is how we provide ways for our public to provide information or their input um about the district's direction. So that's the two-way communication. And then how we prepare information and have it available publicly or we talk about it publicly in schoolboard meetings so that it is in a place where our community can can see it and follow along. And so some highlights from this
004OE9 that we are pretty proud of this year is that we know that we talk about student results and operating expectations here at schoolboard meetings and then we make sure that we have them available online and the recordings of them available so that our families can continue to follow along with those. We also make sure that our presentations and our publications are better at addressing the challenges that we face. And so this year there was the addition of the efocus newsletter. And so thinking about how that was a way for us to bring perspective and some clarity to the dish some issues that our district was facing. So as we heard about things things that were really sort of hot issues within um our you know within our community we we you know collected those
005and every month have put together an e- newswsletter to address those. We also have added two pages in our annual report that just addresses our continuous improvement. And last year we advanced seven things that we um really needed to continue to work on and work towards because we weren't meeting the mark. So also another another initiative that the school board had asked about was was data dashboards. And so we took our school scorecards, which were pretty complicated documents, and summarized them down into smaller onepage sheets for our community to be able to see those. So you will be able to find those on your school's web pages and also um on our on our district web page. We have all of them uh collected there under our strategic framework. So and then this year the
006addition of our environmental scan. are really um tuning in, dialing in to hot button issues um faster and thinking about how we're going to address these things. And so we um have worked to create a public relations strategy to respond to the content. So each situation's a little different how we work on it uh or how we tackle tackle the issue, but um that has been a strategy we have been using this year that's worked well. And then the other one is thinking about two-way two-way communication. And what's I I was proud of as I was collecting all of the evidence that you will see within the report itself um linked in you can click into any of them. But the two-way list of evidence was longer than the um where we were just pushing
007information out to people. And so I felt good about that in the sense that we have really been intentional about adding more opportunities to do that. Uh the referendum road shows were a good a good start to that last fall. And then we've added superintendent focus groups this year, thinking about um those are places we can learn more about our families and what they're experiencing in our system. And then also um this year we have had our M and Latino caregiver advisory groups. We've been building relationships and continuing to learn from each other. And then as as you know from my last OE3 presentation that we launched a communications committee this last year as we were building a new three-year communications plan and part of that work was a communications survey and that's been a
008great tool for us to learn about what our how our community wants um to receive communication. So that was a good a good um ad I think this year for us. And then thinking about how we've used our collaboratively created communications plan and how that continues to guide our work, not only the new one, the new forward three years, um we also worked firmly in the last three-year plan and um that works really well for us. And so we think of a variety through that. We think of a variety of accessible strategic communication strategies. um we ensure that our district communications are accessible and when we say that they're translated into Spanish, they are captioned if it's a video. Um they're they're published in a variety of methods so people can access them. And so
009just really being intentional about making things accessible for our families. And also um something we will need to get better at is thinking about how we how when we write complex letters or um complex topics, we're trying to explain to families how we um synthesize that into a um you know a 10th grade, 8th or 10th grade level for families just so that makes it more accessible. So, uh, in collaboration with our, um, Department of Equity and Inclusion, Michael and his team, we communicate through the Every Family Everyday newsletter, and that's where we're celebrating our students and staff of color that gets high click rates. Um, and something that we're proud of showcasing. And then we continue to build communication capacity. So, thinking about from the classroom to home communication, we're really proud of that.
010This year, it grew by 7%. Our goal uh, was 76% and we ended with 83%. So, we had some schools really make some nice strides this year in that. And I always like to brag a little bit about what went well for us around our communications awards. And so, we have National School Public Relations Association awards and the Wisconsin School Public Relations Associated Association awards. Say that fast. Um, and so we're really proud of these. We won a golden achievement award at the national level for our like nowhere else campaign. So thinking about all those videos that we did with our students, I think we had 25 videos that we um advanced with students um talking about their experience. We had the thumb print, the you know design on t-shirts. We had the pennant campaign
011that we launched with homecoming and throughout the school year and really just advancing that like nowhere else. And so we were happy to win that award. We actually presented on it at a national conference a couple weeks ago. And then also an award of excellence for our calendar, award of merit for our annual report. And then at the Wisconsin level, we had an award of merit last year for our dual language immersion program marketing materials. So we made a video and um and the marketing materials that we pushed out. Um and so we're happy happy to share that. That did that felt like that went well for us. And so, of course, there's always areas of continued improvement, and here's just a few things. Um, and so we are going to continue to seek places
012in our system to um think about when people are affected by a decision, are we able are we able to consult, involve, or collaborate with them? And then also thinking about are we able to demonstrate how their feedback was used? And I think that will go a long way. I've heard you as schoolboard members say a few times that you um wonder about um you know where was the input in the process and I know we've missed the mark on a few things but um we also have have made really good strides in that area but something we will focus on and then also we'll continue to build capacity around classroom to caregiver communications so it's ca it's cascaded again this year to schools build I've built in checkpoints And um we're going to continue
013to build that momentum this year so that we can continue to to um have families that are well well informed and well engaged with their teachers, their students teachers. And then thinking about this year has been a year where we have really dug into seeking ways to continue to build trust with our community, whether it's events that have happened that have have had us sort of take a step back with that or um places that um we may have missed the mark on something. And so thinking about how we're going to continue to build trust, how are we going to continue to correct miss and disinformation. There is a lot of that in our community. Um and something that we have to continue to tackle and we have strategically been doing that this year, but
014something we're going to continue to work towards this year. And then just thinking overall how we protect the SRA school district brand. something that you know continues um as we show up in the news in ways that um we are less desirable. We are trying to counter that with with ways that we can be in the news for things that are are positive. So those are some strategies we are using. All right. Well, I want to thank you. I look forward to your questions at the board meeting on Monday night. Thanks so much for all you do. Appreciate it. [Music]