April 3, 2023 - Introduced by Joint Legislative Council. Referred to Committee on Education.
SB179,,22An Act to create 115.385 (1h) of the statutes; relating to: school and school district accountability report for a consolidated school district. SB179,,33Analysis by the Legislative Reference Bureau This bill is explained in the Notes provided by the Joint Legislative Council in the bill.
SB179,,44The people of the state of Wisconsin, represented in senate and assembly, do enact as follows: Joint Legislative Council prefatory note: This draft was prepared for the Joint Legislative Council’s Study Committee on Shared School District Services.
Current law requires the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to annually publish accountability reports, or “report cards” for individual schools and school districts. Report cards are issued for all public schools and school districts in Wisconsin. Current law requires DPI to factor certain measures of a school’s performance or district’s improvement into the report cards. Additionally, the report cards must include an index system that creates five performance categories and assigns each school and school district to one of the categories. Under DPI’s current accountability formula for the report cards, DPI needs at least two consecutive school years of performance data to calculate a school district’s improvement score and performance category. Under current law, on the effective date of consolidation, the school districts that were consolidated cease to exist. Therefore, a newly consolidated school district does not have enough performance data for DPI to measure the consolidated school district’s improvement. Under the current framework, DPI assigns a newly consolidated school district a placeholder of “N/A” on its report card until DPI has enough data to determine the consolidated school district’s improvement or assign a performance category for the consolidated school district.
The bill specifies that DPI may not determine a consolidated school district’s improvement, identify the consolidated school district’s level of improvement, or assign the consolidated school district a performance category for the school year in which the consolidation takes effect and the subsequent two school years. Instead, in the report cards published for the school year in which the consolidation takes effect and the subsequent 2 school years, DPI must include: (1) the following statement: “Due to recent consolidation, necessary data is not available for this school district.”; (2) the first school year for which a performance category will be assigned to the consolidated school district; and (3) the performance category assigned to each affected school district for the school year before the consolidation took effect.
SB179,15Section 1. 115.385 (1h) of the statutes is created to read: SB179,,66115.385 (1h) For a school district consolidated under s. 117.08 or 117.09, all of the following apply to the accountability reports published for the school year in which the school district consolidation takes effect and the subsequent 2 school years: SB179,,77(a) The department may not determine the consolidated school district’s improvement under sub. (1) (a). SB179,,88(b) The department may not identify the consolidated school district’s level of improvement or assign the consolidated school district to a performance category under sub. (1) (b). SB179,,99(c) In place of a performance category under sub. (1) (b), the department shall include all of the following: SB179,,10101. The following statement: “Due to recent consolidation, necessary data is not available for this school district.” SB179,,11112. The first school year for which a performance category will be assigned to the consolidated school district. SB179,,12123. The performance category assigned to each affected school district, as defined in s. 117.03 (1) (c), for the school year before the consolidation took effect.
