001Greetings members of the board of education and members of the community of the Sun Prairie Area School District. I am Dr. Sarah Chayak Clarity here to provide anformational update under the superintendence report on the Wisconsin Act 60 graduation requirement regarding personal finance. The reason I'm bringing this forward is due to a few factors. First, Wisconsin Act 60, which was created in December of 2023, mandates that a 0.5 standalone credit in personal finance, be obtained by each graduate, beginning with the class of 2028. Currently, the Sun Prairie Area School District requires 25 total credits, including the required Wisconsin core 15, plus 10 choice elective credits. The personal finance requirement is not yet included in our current policy which is policy IKF or in our current procedure which is procedure IKFR. Our graduates earn graduation requirements related
002to personal finance currently as they earn instruction on personal finance within the course of economics in the social studies department. So to provide some background to the state legislature and their decision in December of 2023, um we actually go back to 2017. And in 2017, we had Act 94. Act 94 required all Wisconsin school districts to adopt kindergarten through 12th grade financial literacy standards, which we did, and required districts to incorporate those financial literacy standards and education into their curriculum. However, they did not stipulate a specific course or a specific graduation requirement at that time. Fast forward to 2023 then and act 60 was created and that is when we now have a requirement that by the graduating class of 2028 students earn a standalone.5 credit course, a halfcredit course in personal financial literacy. Here
003you can see an overview of the act. It's pretty straightforward. Uh has two sections. The first section is the explicit naming of the financial literacy components that must be included uh within that half credit of instruction. And those include financial mindset, education and employment, money management, saving and investing, credit and debt, and risk management and insurance. The second section states clearly that this begins to be applied to pupils graduating in the high school class of 2028. So to say that summarize it differently, these topics that must be included are um areas within the personal finance um standards. Again, it must be a standalone course and cannot be embedded within another course. And in addition, the DPI has also clarified that the course can be taught by a number of different departments. has to be a
004DPI licensed educator, but could be taught by a teacher in the business department, in the family and consumer science department, and or in the social studies department. So, if we take a look at our current graduation policy, policy IKF, which dates back to 2022, which was the last revision, you can see that in order for our students to earn a Sun Prairie High School diploma from any of our three high schools, students must meet the requirements that are in fact the in effect at the time of their nth grade enrollment. They need to earn 25 credits minimum. This is a page right from our course guide which outlines within those 25 credits the number of credits and in some cases specific courses or course content that must be met within departments. Students need to be
005enrolled in high school for eight semesters and they have to be enrolled in a class or a board approved activity every class period or be in alternative education and all of this is uh outlined in that policy. So the implications on act 60 in our system are really in two areas. The first area is our department offerings. We needed to determine which department moving forward after beginning with the class of 2028 will offer the personal finance course given that it can be taught um among three different departments. And we also need to consider will we keep economics as a graduation requirement. So within social studies, one of the explicit courses that students have to um take in order to graduate is economics and again that's where we've been teaching uh personal finance standards. The second
006area that has implications for our system is around graduation credits. So wondering do we then increase our total requirement from 25 to 25.5 or do we keep the required credits of 25.0 zero and reallocate a half credit from the 10 required elective credits. In essence, taking those 10 elective credits, reducing that to 9 and a half choice elective credits and requiring the 0.5 of personal finance. So, we had to make some decisions and in order to best inform the decisions, we pulled together a team of educators, administrators, and students um to talk about all those implications. And so in early May, a team came together that had 26 teachers with representation from the business department, the family consumer science department, and the social studies department along with uh the East and West High School administrators
007and four of our student school board representatives. And so what we did during that meeting is we reviewed Act 60 and kind of went over those expectations and discussed the implications just named on our future course offerings. We talked about decision-making protocol and whose decision this was um ultimately in the end to determine you know what we will do with graduation requirements in the future. The committee also learned about our curriculum development process, knowing that regardless of where we land with the personal finance course in which department and and how many credits with graduation, we are going to need to work to revise the current courses curriculum to be more in alignment with our um expectations around what high quality u curriculum and instruction looks like through our new curriculum renewal and design cycle. And
008then ultimately we closed with a a large dialogue through circle conversations and a few rounds of processing on gathering our educators input on these personal financial literacy decisions with both the curriculum uh and instruction as well as their opinions on graduation requirements. What came out of that meeting? Not only was the input gathered, but some other factors that came up through this process that we needed to look into in addition to be able to in advance a recommendation. And so there were seven key factors that also came up and those were the following. First, what if any impact will there be on our Sum Prairie virtual school students? our students who are taking Jedi full-time um and and earning a some prey diploma but using the Jedi curriculum. The second was uh what about our
009students who are in the STEM Academy at Madison College? If they take the the STEM Academy courses full-time their junior and senior year, what implications do we need to consider for um the students who are looking to enroll in that at the end of their sophomore year? we were needing to think about um because this is going to need to be a standalone course, what grade levels will we offer the course to? We currently have it um uh offered to 9th through 12th graders and there has been conversation that a lot of the topics covered are more applicable to our juniors and seniors who are beginning to think about um their credit rating and loans and things that will prepare them for life beyond high school. And at the same time there's also conversation that
010well our s there are freshman and sophomores who are taking the course now who are um wanting to be planful about those things that are coming down the line and so we had to make a decision um around that. Another factor that came up with pretty strong voices during our circles was around the impact on at risk students. So, if we raise graduation requirements, um, how will that impact our students who are barely making it to graduation with the 25 credit requirement that we currently have? Another factor people were wondering about were um, what are we doing around the area? What are the local districts graduation requirements? How many electives are required? Um, particularly across Dne County. Another factor is our current eighth and nth grade course enrollments. So, those are the students who are
011going to be graduating in 2028 and beyond. How many students are already taking this course um and what potential impacts there might be on staffing, any financial implications that may come um based on how we land this decision. So, we'll kind of walk through each of those points in the next few slides here. So, Sumpre Virtual School, we reached out to the uh partner that we have for our Sumpre Virtual School. They affirmed that they currently have both in Jedi and the entire Wisconsin ESchool network a course it's called personal finance and money management that is a half credit course uh estimated completion time is about 16 to 18 weeks which is about a semester um that has gone through a rigorous comparison to make sure that this course meets the state requirements and all
012adviserss within the Jedi network are aware of these requirements and understand that students must have to take this course beginning in 2028 in order to meet graduation requirements. We then inquired more deeply about STEM Academy students. So, students who are interested in the STEM Academy at Madison College would be recommended to take this course during their 9th or 10th grade year because when students apply to the STEM Academy at the end of their 10th grade year, uh Madison College does like for them to have any extraneous graduation requirements already met. And so an implication here would be that we would be seeking to keep personal finance open to grades 9 through 12 and have to be communicative about students who are looking to enroll at into the STEM program. That that is a course that
013would need to be um taken preferably in their ninth or tth grade year. We also wanted to think about our atrisisk students and how many students are graduating um right now. what are the what's the credit load that's being earned? How many students are just making it to graduation? Um and if we did change the amount of elective offerings, uh how might that affect students um with their total overall credit load? So here's some data. It shows that right now if students do not take any study halls at all, they can earn eight and a quarter credits per year. So that's the fourb block plus a quarter credit for the entire year for SP30. So if a student went freshman to senior year and didn't take a single study hall and all of their years
014in Sun Prairie, they could graduate with 33 credits. If a student uh took a study hall every single semester from freshman year to senior year, so eight study halls, they would be earning 7.25 credits per year with a total of 29 credits. And so this histogram shows the variance that we had last year. This is our 2024 graduate credit attainment graph. And you can see that there are students who are um just getting to 25 between the the bars represent in between. So the first bar for example shows in between 25 to 26 credits. So maybe the student at 25 25.125 25 and a half 25.375. Right? So that that would be that that bar there in between 25 and 26. And you can see we've got students going all the way up into 43
01544. Um with the majority here are between um 29 and 32 credits. So students are graduating with quite a bit of credits. Breaking that down a little more specifically looking at the past two years um you've got the total number of graduates. You can see we're we've slightly increased and that is a trend that we are seeing at our high schools increasing enrollment. The average number of credits, as that graph kind of showed, is about 29.6 credits average per student when they graduate our high school. So, beyond the 25 right now requirement by about 4.6 credits. Within the electives, again, it's 10 students have to earn 10 elective credits to graduate. Uh the average number is uh just about 11. So, just a hair under 11 at 10.94 and 10.96. Then we thought then we
016again here came the question around what about our students who are just making it. So how many students are just getting to the necessary 25? Um in 22 23 school year there were 11 students who just got to 25 and then last year we had 17 students who just graduated with what I would say is the minimum amount that you you could achieve to graduate. The reason why we looked into this is because thinking about if we're adding another half credit on top of the 25, uh, where would that burden lie? Right? So, we absolutely would lie on the students who are just getting to 25. But if we rose it to 25.5, we would also be looking at the students who are within um 25.0 and 25.5. So, our students who are getting 25.125
017or 2575. So in total, how many students did we graduate that had fewer than 25.5 credits? 32 students in 2223 and 41 students in 2324. So these numbers would reflect students who if we changed it to 25.5 would not be meeting criteria to graduate. Earlier I spoke about the core 15. So, in the state of Wisconsin, there are required graduation requirements that all school districts um must ensure that students are earning. It's 15 credits. It'll be 15.5 beginning in 2028. And they're laid out in the following way. So, English language arts four credits, math three credits, science three credits, social studies three credits, physical education one and a half. Health a half credit that can be earned between the grades of seven and 12. And then there's that personal financial literacy credit beginning in 2028.
018And so school districts do can and do make um further recommendations within those departments around specific courses that must be taken. But uh in general this core 15 cannot be reduced across these departments as this is laid out in the state statutes. So one of the questions that was raised was how do we compare with other DNE county districts in terms of what's required for graduation? And so here you can see a chart of how the districts around us um have varying degrees of credits that are required. And so of those who are geographically closest to us uh captured on this screen, we are on the high end with only McFarland being higher than us in terms of total number of credits required for graduation. And because the core 15 in general um are pretty
019consistent across district, there is a couple of districts who have a higher required social studies requirement than what the state requires. Uh you can see the elective credits when you take those core 15 and add on the elective credits. In general, that's how you get to the total number of credits. Now, some some districts do specify further within their electives what needs to be taken. Again, we do not. Um but in general you can see again we're on the higher end. So that does impact students for mobility who may be coming to us their junior or senior year uh coming from a district with a lower graduation requirement. And so one of the things that we need to think about is um if we increase our credit load to 25.5 will that put an even
020greater burden on students who may be transitioning in for example from Madison Metropolitan um expecting in that district to graduate with 22. Right? That's a pretty big difference. As we look ahead to uh districts that are a little bit further away from us but still within Dayne County, you can see that there is variance and we are more in the middle uh when you compare to districts uh again more geographically distal across Dne County. Um and so you can see even some districts go as high as 28, but those are a little bit further away from us. So that got us to some recommendations. Our committee was very aligned and felt strongly that we should keep the economics course a requirement in social studies. Uh given the the depth of knowledge beyond just personal finance
021but the economic system in general uh that's required to really navigate life um in the United States. And so uh their strong recommendation is to keep economics as uh the credit part of the credit that's required within social studies. The team was also pretty universally aligned in keeping personal finance as a business department course. Um, and because business created this course, they've been running it successful for a number of years. Um, feeling like it would be an advantage to keep it in the business department. after learning about Madison College and their desire for students to come in with that graduation requirement already kept, the recommendation would be to keep that as a uh open to grades 9 through 12 um with the understanding that there may be more real life applicability as students, you know,
022get towards the end of their high school career. So, um that led us then to what to do about the number of credits. the committee was kind of split here and some of those extra pieces of information that I just went through came up in our conversation and I think have helped advance this recommendation. So, we had um a pretty even split around people who felt we should keep it at 25 and people who felt we should increase it to 25.5. The differences really being um keeping it at 25 due to those students who are just making it to graduation and not wanting to increase um more burden on students uh particularly those who are at risk of not graduating overall. and then also influenced on the research that we did around our our peers
023in the county and we're already um you know number of credits ahead of everyone else and pushing that even further also creates an additional barrier for students who are moving into our district with a lower expectation from other districts in the county. On the flip side, increasing to 25.5, some of the conversation there was around not wanting there to be a reduction overall for the the arts department, right? Or the other electives, um, CTE courses, physical education, some of the other courses that would be in electives. But I think what that additional research showed was that many of our students are already graduating with between 29 and 33 credits, right? The average being 29.6. and so don't really foresee a significant impact on a reduction of those other courses um if we didn't increase to
02425.5. So the recommendation that we are going to be advancing is that we take those 10 required elective credits reduce that from 10 to 9 and a half and then we have an additional half credit of personal finance. So beginning with the class of 2028 keeping graduation requirements at 25.0 No, but reducing electives from 10 to 9 and a half and then adding that half credit of personal finance as its own separate category. We will be coming back to the school board in um on June 9th uh for approval. We would have to make revisions to district policy IKF and procedure IKFR. And this was just a superintendent report today and going to be answering questions that the board might have around the proposed changes. Another piece that came up was around staffing implications and
025any financial implications that we might need to address. This is a um unfunded mandate if you will. Um but so would there be any implications in that regard? So we look at our who's enrolling right now remembering that our current ninth graders are the class of 2028 and so our current 9th graders and then also our current eighth graders uh would be the ones who would be held accountable for ensuring they earn these credits. So you can see we have a number of students already enrolling our current 9th grade class this school year across east and west. You can see we've got about 18% of our 9th graders this year already taking personal finance and another 9% more already signed up for next year. West currently we've got 10% of their 9th grade class currently
026taking this course already. Next year 15% and so um our current eighth graders about 8% altogether have signed up for next year. So, we do have a number of students who have already taken this course and this course does already meet the requirements. It's just an elective offering right now, but it does already meet the state statute. So, any of the students who have taken this course um would not need to do anything different. They are already meeting the graduation requirement. So, we don't anticipate a significant overall FTE or staffing increase, full-time equivalent staffing increase to accommodate this new requirement. We do recognize that there may be a slight increase, right? That data shows that about 10 to 18% of students per year right now are taking it. Um, so there may be a slight
027increase and we also know that current enrollment does vary as students do see the topics more applicable to their life as they get closer to junior and senior year. And so that would be expected. Um ultimately in considering the reduction on those other departments again given the number of credits that students are already earning that surpass those 25 the increased course enrollment would likely be offset with a slight decrease but that would be sprinkled across all of the other departments for which students can earn electives and you can earn electives also in the core right you can learn earn math electives and English electives and so on. So really while there would be a a slight increase in personal finance enrollment, we don't predict a dramatic decrease in any other department. It is true that
028we will likely grow the business department. The business department is excited about that. Um and in recent years it has been more difficult in general to find educators and then you know business educators even a segment within that. Um, so as a a backup, uh, we do know that it would be possible to allow family and consumer science or social studies teachers to teach, um, some sections if need be, but we really would concentrate this in the business department and like to use our own staff and seek to hire more uh, if if it grows in that way. So, as I mentioned, our current nth graders will graduate in 2028 with our eighth graders the year after that. Students who have already taken the course in those grades already meet the new requirement. And so,
029to communicate to families um about any student who may, for example, already have their four-year plan set. Um, some students do plan meticulously and might already have drafted out their four-year blueprint that is set and and doesn't have personal finance in it currently and we want to be accommodating and ensure that um we aren't forcing students to change their schedule but leaving it a possibility if they would like to. And so there's three options that we would like to communicate to families by the end of this school year and they are as follows. First of all, um students can keep their course roster as is for next year and then enroll in personal finance before the end of their senior year, right? So, our current eighth and nth graders can leave their their current classes
030as they've picked for next year and then in junior senior year um take personal finance. They step two or number two, I guess, is that they could meet with a high school counselor this summer. We have our high school counselors on site every Wednesday throughout the summer in order to be responsive uh to students uh both coming in uh the district but also students who want to adjust their schedules for the coming year. And so we would communicate that if a student wants to come in and adjust their schedule for next year that our counselors are available on site to do that. The third option is again for any student who maybe has that explicit plan already laid out. We would allow students for this coming year to take that Jedi course that has already
031met the the personal financial literacy um requirement. We would allow students to stay enrolled with us full-time, but then enroll in the Jedi asynchronous course next year at no cost to the student or the family um if they wanted to do it in their freshman or sophomore year next year and get it done with. So, that is uh the information on Wisconsin Act 60 and the implications on our graduation requirements. I look forward to answering any questions that you may have at the upcoming board meeting on May 27th. Thank you. [Music]