001hello and thank you for taking the time to review this information about Wisconsin Act 95 I'm Stephanie Leonard I serve as the assistant superintendent for teaching learning and equity for sun pre schools and I'm joined by Dr Kurt mold director of digital media Innovation and strategy we're here today to share some information with you that will be important for you to consider uh with our public hearing and Schoolboard meeting on March 10th that meeting begins at six o'clock at our professional Learning Center in the boardroom next slide please Kurt the agenda for this presentation will begin with a uh the history of ac95 which is brief it hasn't been around very long our existing practice our recommended procedure change to ji3 and ikd and to share the discussion of the waiver process that we're seeking
002through the public meeting on March 10th I'll turn it to Kurt for the next portion of this thanks Dr Leonard act 95 or the Wisconsin guaranteed admission law was signed into law and uh it established that the Board of Regents at the University of Wisconsin system must establish a guaranteed admission program that would directly admit students in the top 5% to the University of Wisconsin Madison and students in the top 10% of their class to any of the other UW system colleges or universities based solely on GPA in 2024 we uh were required to apply this law and uh the board may remember that we brought forward at that point a uh procedure in the spring uh new procedure to us ji3 uh which uh discussed and brought Clarity to our process and uh how
003we would uh approach uh Concepts like rounding up uh as you know we typically do not have whole numbers of students that are um within a graduating class and so uh we wanted to increase the number of opportunities provided to our students and uh we decided as a district at that point that we were going to round up to uh increase the number of spots open for our students so for instance an application is if 5% of your class ended up being 14 and a half students uh we would round up to the next number or 15 students to um add that notation to their transcript uh and it's important to note that students have these transcripts actually um uh manually entered on is the top 5% and top 10% uh notation we worked directly
004with the Wisconsin Association of school boards to quickly craft policy uh at that point we were told that we were uh developing a model policy and it was shared uh with others around the state uh and at the same time we knew that there were other systems that were running into challenges with the application uh of the Wisconsin Act 95 law and I'll discuss those here in a second uh the benefit to doing that last year was that our numbers matched the calculations so through rounding up if uh 15 students qualified for the top 5% we were able to identify 15 students in the top 5% and same thing with the uh top 10% if 30 students qualified for uh the top 10% our numbers broke down in a way um through luck or Serendipity
005that exactly 30 students ended up getting the top 10% notation so while this is happening we knew that this was a dynamic legal environment that people were asking a lot of questions and seeking a lot of clarity and we knew that there was a lack of clear guidance for ties fortunately we were not in that situation last year uh and we also knew that uh when we put forward the policy for rounding up that uh there was some Rumblings from uh the legislature and uh the UW system that uh that was not within the nature of the spirit of the law and that was just hearsay and we were waiting for greater Clarity that additional guidance came uh well after our class rank had been established and the Wisconsin school administrators Alliance took the lead
006in pulling together the UW system and the Department of Public Instruction and we're grateful for that leadership for providing uh Clarity where a lack of clarity existed there were two areas that uh Clarity was provided to our system that uh applied directly to Sun Prairie one that school districts are required to break ties in GPA and you cannot as a district submit more than 5% or 10% of your class for guaranteed admission again this had little impact on us because we are so close in numbers and that school districts must always round down to include only those students whose whole number ranking divided by the total class size is exactly at our fully within the 5% or 10% raking band as applicable uh these are in quotations uh the reference is cited at the end
007of this presentation uh if you'd like to look at that direct reference to uh the original documentation and notification from Wisconsin school administrators Alliance and so uh for us that means that we would need to revise our policy because our current uh policy and procedure j3 specifically notes that we would round up and again that was done to create the greatest number of opportunities for the greatest number of students uh who uh had demonstrated that um you know this was a deserved uh academic recognition there are ongoing unresolved questions that we are um considering uh into the future that uh it may be likely that we bring forward in future years uh further clarifications in needs to change uh based on j3 specifically in the area of tiebreaking there is not any legal statute uh
008or precedent that exists for tiebreaking when uh two students are near or at uh um uh equivalent in a GPA uh and so the law specifically States GPA uh and does not provide any remedy for understanding how when or the method through which a tie break should happen uh and there is also no relief in statute or precedent around the means and manner in which uh a district should go about uh rounding down and so uh it makes sense to round down to the whole number but again this is new to us and we're implementing something that has not been uh Court tested uh in the past uh two other factors that we await further guidance on from the state that don't have an impact on us but may end up influencing how districts apply
009this law or the law itself is there are many districts throughout the state that engage in non-traditional grading so not a through F grading uh based in Competency Based grades and so they do not receive a GPA and therefore uh they must seek a waiver uh and again there's um very little remedy in in how that uh should actually look in play out and we'll talk about the waiver process here in a second uh and then also duly enrolled and early graduate students we're fortunate in Sun Prairie that students that have dual enrollment with our colleges and universities uh specifically speaking of uh students at Madison College stem program uh in the firefighter EMR program in start college now or early college credit program or eccp uh we transcribe all of those classes directly uh
010as credits with GPA uh into our transcripts and so this also applies to students who uh have attended six semesters and uh while we have had early graduates uh we have not had students graduate earlier than the end of their junior year so again those are just things to be aware of moving forward that don't have a direct uh implication on us so in order for us to move forward with understanding how we would go through the process of tiebreaking and rounding down we also recognize that while it worked out last year it may not work out every year uh where we just have a clean break in the number of students that sit at the uh 5% and uh 10% U ranking notation and so with that we needed to explore options uh for
011uh how to go about that work within our system uh and do that uh most effectively to the greatest benefit of the of the students and so with that I'm going to hand this back to Dr Leonard uh to talk about our waiver process thank you Kurt so Kurt took us through the evolution of the changing landscape of act 95 through July and now I'll share with you August moving forward in August DPI released information that districts could seek a waiver and that again was based on the experience of school districts across the state and the advocacy of our state Administration um Alliance and so uh now there is a possibility for us to apply for a waiver and as Kurt said it may not fall neatly into place this year and in future years
012as it did last year we sought the advice of council who told us to stand still for a little bit as this landscape continues to evolve very quickly and in our most recent consultation with our school district legal council it was advised we consider seeking a waiver in case we do need to be in a tiebreaking situation for our top 5% and 10% and that's what brings us to the public hearing on March 10th in front of our school board we're seeking the school board's approval to apply for a waiver to the Department of Public Instruction or tiebreaking criteria for ACT 95 purposes only here is the tiebreaking crit criteria that the administrative team is recommending we recommend that we begin with the first criteria of the number of high school credits earned by the
013students at the end of six semesters if that doesn't break the tie we would move to item two which would be the number of High School AP courses Andor dual credit courses that are listed in our course guide Andor college or university credits earned through early college credit program and start college now at the end of six semesters and then finally if if rationale one and rationale 2 do not work then we would be looking at item three the ACT score on the junior year Spring State assessment so that's what we're bringing forward so to play Kurt's example forward let's assume we can send 13 students that are in the top 5% and 15 students have a 4.0 this is how we would try to determine who are number 14 and 15 by starting with
014number one and then working down through number two or three if needed so next slide please Kurt our rationale for this is that we were trying to determine the most Equitable way for all students to have a chance at ensuring they are in that top 5% we feel that the access to courses have no barriers for any student and therefore we're prioritizing the total number of credits that a student has taken over six semesters bucket two looking at AP and college coursework is an acknowledgement of the strength of schedule we did not start with number two as our first criteria because there are some programming options within bucket two that have barriers that not all students can access and then finally we would end with the ACT exam which will be the most I'll say
015cut and dry aspect of bringing this forward but also recognize there are some flaws with standardized testing and the administration of that um ACT test and so that's our rationale for bringing these three things forward so want to make sure that we have an understanding that there would be two options for ranking on a student's transcript first and foremost we are not making a change in the way we do the Sun Prairie Area School District class rank on every student's transcript they would have a class rank calculated through procedure ikd so in that example if there were 15 children with a 4.0 15 children on their Sun Prairie class rank would be number one out of 343 so the Sun Prairie class rank will be listed on every child's transcript in accord ordance with policy
016or excuse me procedure ikd students who make the top 5% or top 10% when calculating using District procedure ji3 would have a second notation on their transcript which would indicate top 5% for ACT 95 or top 10% for ACT 95 next slide please Kurt so if this waiver is sought by our school board and approved by the Department of Public Instruction that necessitates changes to our district procedures ji3 and ikd as Kurt alluded to earlier when we wrote j3 last year we were under different guidance and rules and now we are shifting j3 to match the current expectations for ACT 95 and to reflect our tiebreaking criteria should we need to apply that to determine the top five and 10% also we're just bringing forward a slight modification to procedure ikd class rank we're adding
017a sentence to indicate that this procedure is applicable for class rank only to ensure that we have Clarity that all children will have class rank calculated according to procedure ikd and then act 95 statute work will be reflected in either a top 5% or a top 10% on the transcript for students that qualify next slide please Kurt so we're here or will be together on March 10th in a public hearing seeking the board's approval to apply for a waiver process if the board passes that and has the resolution that comes forward through official board action then we submit that to the Department of Public Instruction please note that this is an annual process we as a district must seek the waiver annually and this would apply to this year's 11th grade class following the completion
018of the 11th grade year if you'd like inter additional information on any of the things that we've talked about there's some links here that would um provide some guidance and further information about what Kurt and I have covered uh we look forward to engaging with dialogue with our school board on March 10th we welcome anyone who is interested to join us for the public hearing and or the school board meeting on March 10th at 6 o' in our boardroom which is located at the professional Learning Center thank you [Music]