News

Monday, September 20, 5 p.m., Operations Work Group meeting (submit a written statement or sign up to speak here)

Details about what's on the agenda, streaming, and other ways to engage with the Board can be found here

Attendance Matters!
Public school districts’ funding is primarily tied to student enrollment (called membership). In order to distribute taxpayer dollars appropriately, districts across Wisconsin are required to share student attendance numbers (called the membership count) with the Department of Public Instruction. The count occurs annually on the third Friday in September. This year, the membership count will happen September 17, 2021.

While it’s important for your child to attend school every day, attending school on September 17 will help provide resources to support students and our strategic goals. This applies to students going to school in person and in our virtual programs.

Dear MMSD Families,

I hope the first few days of school have gone well for your family! As you may already know, breakfast and lunch are free for ALL MMSD students this school year under the federal Seamless Summer Option (SSO). I’m writing to share additional food services information families should know for the beginning of the school year.

This Community Conversation will focuses on various topics of the new school year, and will feature school board members, central office leaders, health experts, and district staff. Interpretation in both Hmong and Spanish will be provided.

For the first quarter of the school year, MMSD is expanding its mask requirement in elementary (grades 4K - 5) and middle school (grades 6-8) communities to now include masking outdoors as well as indoors and on buses. The mask requirement includes staff, families, and visitors in elementary and middle school buildings, as well as after school childcare and activities at K-8 schools. Our schools will be working with families who need accommodations, to ensure all students' needs are met.

This decision comes after recent collaborative discussions on local COVID conditions, and to stay ahead of evolving risks associated with the Delta variant on unvaccinated children. Throughout the pandemic, the district has worked closely with our panel of local health advisors, whose expertise informs our practices, along with guidance from local, state, and national public health organizations. Through following the science and the guidance, MMSD continues to successfully stay ahead of the safety mitigation curve as the pandemic evolves.

Locally, positive Delta variant cases have spiked at an alarming pace, with positive Dane County cases growing exponentially from 10 new cases a day in July, to 93 a day in August. This local data is consistent with what is being experienced nationally, as school districts across the country have been forced to send large numbers of unvaccinated students home to quarantine only days after the start of their school year. 

In Dane County, medical advisors working on the front lines of the pandemic described local Delta variant cases as very concerning due to its high transmissibility rate, level of severe disease, and incidence of breakthrough infections of those who are vaccinated. Therefore, our advisors unanimously recommended outdoor masking for elementary and middle school students, to ensure our goal of keeping students learning safely in-person and inside school buildings. We feel this extra layer of safety mitigation for students who are under 12 years old, and not eligible to be vaccinated, is best for our younger scholars.

Although we are asking elementary and middle schools to adhere to outdoor masking for the first quarter of the school year, we will continue monitoring local conditions. As our metrics change, our safety mitigation strategies will be adjusted accordingly.

Dear MMSD Families, 

School begins next week, and I hope you and your child are excited about the new school year. Earlier this summer, we announced our plans for students to begin the school year learning in person, five days per week. Today, I am writing to provide an important update for our 4K-5th grade families who have been asking about virtual learning options for students.

We are honored today to be celebrating the renaming of Falk Elementary to Milele Chikasa Anana Elementary School. Ms. Milele was a mentor, advocate, community leader, trailblazer and “Village Mother.” Ms. Milele was the founder and publisher of UMOJA Magazine and was the first African-American woman to serve on the MMSD school board.

Dear Families,

As you may have heard or seen in the news, MMSD has been working diligently to problem-solve around a nationwide bus driver shortage for several weeks. This crisis is an issue impacting schools in Wisconsin and  across the country. School districts have been forced to cancel bus routes, shift schedules, and in some states, close in-person learning altogether. Although we are excited to be able to continue learning in-person five days per week, the driver shortage has put us in an unfortunate situation where an adjustment to school start times for many of our schools is necessary.