The Westby Area School District Board of Education moved another step closer to finalizing a districtwide strategic plan, which Administrator Mike Murphy feels is an important step in bringing continuity to the district while providing staff, students, parents and taxpayers with a joint vision for the future as the district deals with on-going budget concerns and changing educational requirements and overall needs of students in the system.

Murphy told the board that he believes a school district staff should always portray good role models of behavior, which will speak volumes to the parents, students and taxpayers in the district and that the key to making this happen is through keeping people informed and(on?) how the district is doing when it comes to meeting key goals that they have established for themselves as a whole.

“We need to do away with assumptions and develop a strategic plan to guide us,” Murphy said.

A sample strategic plan was e-mailed to all staff members in the school district for review before a revised version was sent to the school board for review.

The final results of the strategic plan will be gathered periodically and whether or not the district is meeting the plan will be determined by the school board after they review the information.

“A strategic plan will provide accountability and more provide direction for everyone in the district,” Murphy said after school board member David Eggen questioned why Murphy felt the school district needed a strategic plan, versus the mission and goals which were already in place.

Murphy relayed his belief that employees and students need to help be accountable for their actions and that a strategic plan will help the system work through that process.

The school board received a basic overview of how students in the Westby district fared during recent state testing for reading, language, mathematics, science and social studies skills in 4th, 8th and 10th grade.

According to the results 67 students in 4th grade participated in the WINNS testing with the majority of students scoring in the proficient and advanced category. Social studies rankings were the highest with 72 percent advanced and 22 percent proficient, while science scores ranked the lowest in the advanced category with only 12 percent, but with 67 percent falling into the proficient category.

In 8th grade, 89 students participated with social studies once again topping the advanced category at 57 percent advanced and 39 percent proficient. Advanced in science came in the lowest at 27 percent, but with 57 percent of participants being proficient.

At the 10th-grade level 80 students participated and social studies once again topped the advanced category at 55 percent advanced and 30 percent proficient, while language arts came in at 11 percent advanced and 71 percent proficient. Overall at the 10th-grade level 83 percent of Westby sophomores fell into the advanced or proficient categories.

After reviewing the test scores the board discussed how they could better prepare students for the annual WINNS tests, with board member Dennis Havlik questioning whether a school district should focus on teaching students to take the test or teach what is important.

“This is just a snapshot of how a group of kids did on a given day. It takes more than this to see if a school district is successful,” Administrator Murphy said.

It was also noted that by the year 2014, 100 percent of students must fall in the proficient or advanced categories according to the “No Child Left Behind” standards, which is creating a difficult situation for many school districts across the nation that are already dealing with budget deficits and stand to lose substantial amounts of funding if the students cannot meet the programs requirements.

The board agreed to place a stronger emphasis on completing exit interview data at both the 8th- and 12th-grade levels to retrieve student perspectives on how the district could improve the learning curve for students entering high school from middle school and from students who are preparing to leave the system and head for college.

School Board President Mike Sebion also suggested contacting college students who graduated from Westby to find out where they struggled once they entered college courses.

In other business the board denied a request from educator Jana Helgesen for an extension of her unpaid leave of absence through the second semester of the 2008-09 school year.

Administrator Murphy recommended denying the request in the best interest of the students and noted that it is his belief that the school district should not establish a precedent of granting yearlong leaves of absence unless there are extenuating circumstances.

“Why would you sign people to a one-year contract and not have them fulfill their obligation,” Murphy said.

Jennie Marx resigned her co-curricular position as the fall cheerleading advisor and Michelle Lee was hired as a part-time special education instructional aide.

The first board of education meeting for 2009 will be held in Coon Valley at 7 p.m. on Jan. 12.