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S2 E3 - Kicking Off the School Year with Special Guests from the Governor’s office and DPI · Inside the OSD

• 0:01
  [Sounds of children playing, talking]
• 0:05
  SPEAKER1: It's the first day of classes and we are starting the year with some special guests from the governor's office and the Department of Public Instruction.
• 0:13
  We're honored to welcome Assistant State Superintendent Tricia Collins, Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez, school nutrition Director Jessica Sharkus
• 0:23
  and the director of Teaching and Learning, Laura Roeker, today.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER2: Welcome to this episode of Inside the OSD podcast, where it's all about the kids.
• 0:35
  Here is your host.
• 0:36
  Lifelong educator, and our superintendent, Dr.
• 0:39
  Leslie Bergstrom.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER1: Welcome to all of you.
• 0:44
  We're happy to have you here in the Oregon School District to help us kick off the 2023-24 school year.
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  And we'll begin by having each of our guests introduce themselves.
• 0:55
  This is Sara Rodriguez
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  SPEAKER3: and I'm the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin.
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  SPEAKER1: Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
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  SPEAKER4: Absolutely. So I just won my election to be lieutenant governor, but prior to that, I was in the state assembly.
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  But for most of my career, I was actually a public health nurse.
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  And so I feel like teachers and nurses are very similar in terms of their passion for what they do.
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  And so I'm just really excited to be here.
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  SPEAKER1: I feel that way too.
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  I feel like they are people who do what they do simply because of the love in their heart.
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  So I appreciate you said that.
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  SPEAKER5: Good morning. I'm Tricia Collins.
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  I'm the assistant state superintendent with the Department of Public Instruction for the Division for Finance and Management.
• 1:39
  That's a long title.
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  SPEAKER1: That IS a long title!
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  SPEAKER5: Our division has teams that work with community nutrition, food, school nutrition, parental options, school finance and DPI's business
• 1:52
  services. And I've worked with the department over 20 years in various roles, and before that I worked for the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
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  SPEAKER1: Well, thank you.
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  SPEAKER6: And I'm Laura Roeker.
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  I'm the director of Teaching and Learning at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
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  I've just been there for about a year, but I actually started my teaching career right here in Oregon with Superintendent Bergstrom as my principal.
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  SPEAKER1: So exciting.
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  SPEAKER6: Yeah. So I taught at Rome Corners Intermediate School, and then I also was a teacher in the Madison Metropolitan School District.
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  And then I went to UW and taught some undergraduate literacy, pre-service teacher courses, and then just joined the department after getting my doctorate
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  last year.
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  SPEAKER1: Well, thank you.
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  And then we'll go over here.
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  SPEAKER7: Hi, I'm Jessica Sharkus and I am the director of the school nutrition team at the Department of Public Instruction.
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  I've been there for 17 years.
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  Crazy to think about that.
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  I was the assistant director for six and the director for 11, and prior to that -- I'm a registered dietitian.
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  So I've worked in hospital food service as well as clinical dietetics.
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  SPEAKER1: Thank you. And you're also a parent of of students here.
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  SPEAKER7: Yeah. My two kiddos are freshmen, so that's pretty exciting.
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  It is.
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  SPEAKER1: It's a big day.
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  SPEAKER7: Yeah. And hi, my name is Sarah Tomasiewic and I am the school nutrition director here
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  SPEAKER8: at the Oregon School District.
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  So I help oversee all of the menus in each one of our buildings here.
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  SPEAKER1: Thank you, Sarah. And it's great to have all of you here, especially when we know you're very busy.
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  So thank you for making time to come here.
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  Why is it important to you to join a school district for the beginning of the year?
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  SPEAKER4: Well, for me, I think it's just such an exciting time for kids.
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  This is Sara Rodriguez.
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  I've got two kids myself, 14 and 16.
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  So I've got a freshman starting this year in high school and then another a junior.
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  And I remember how exciting that first day was, being able to drop off the kids and they were able to see their friends again.
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  But, you know, Wisconsin has such a fantastic school system and we are just so proud in terms of our administration that we were able to bring that school
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  system back up from 18th in the nation to 1 in 10 in the nation to 10th in the nation.
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  So we've got just a fantastic school system here in Wisconsin, and we just want to show it off.
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  SPEAKER1: Thank you.
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  SPEAKER5: I agree. This is Tricia with everything that she said.
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  And I just -- the excitement, the community, the families, the the students as they walked in.
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  The smiles on their face were just happy and so thankful to be here to celebrate with you and then learn more about the school and the district and all
• 4:28
  the great things you're doing.
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  So thank you so much.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER1: Well, thank you. And I'm glad you used the word celebrate because that's what it felt like today.
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  The little ones and the big ones, because this is a K-6 school coming in.
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  We're joyful.
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  It was a really joyful feeling.
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  SPEAKER6: And I think it's important just to for anybody at DPI to be out in schools and in our communities and really celebrating the hard work of our educators are we
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  know how much work goes into.
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  So many of us have an education background and we know how much work goes into the beginning of the school year.
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  So we just want to celebrate.
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  I mean, this Green Ribbon Award is an incredible accomplishment.
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  And but just the day to day in and out work here, I mean, this is a world class facility, but I think it's really the educators that make it that way.
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  And so we're just so grateful to be here with you all.
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  SPEAKER1: Yes, I agree.
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  The building is beautiful, but the building is not what makes the school.
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  Right. It's the people in it and the important work they do.
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  So thank you.
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  SPEAKER7: I'm just excited to be here because Sarah's done such a great job making sure that all of our kids here in Wisconsin are well, at least in Oregon School
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  district are getting fed every morning serving breakfast and lunch.
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  That's pretty amazing.
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  Um, you can't learn if you're hungry, right?
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  SPEAKER1: And fed healthy foods.
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  Absolutely. Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  SPEAKER7: So very exciting to be here.
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  SPEAKER1: And, Sarah, you and I are here because this is our job.
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  We are here. Yes, but it's one of the best parts of the job, right?
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  Is getting that excitement of everyone coming back for the first day and knowing that there are that kids are excited to come back.
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  That means a lot.
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  So are there any efforts or initiatives or programs that any of you would like to highlight for our families?
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  SPEAKER4: Yeah. I can talk a little bit about what the Governor Evers and myself have put into the budget that I think is really exciting.
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  We have over $30 million in Kids Get Ahead initiative, which is really about mental health in the schools.
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  And I as a nurse myself and having two kids when we went through Covid, I believe that there were always mental health issues within the school system
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  themselves. But that just exacerbated a lot of issues that were out there and it made it more visible to us as clinicians.
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  And I know as teachers you saw this as well.
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  And so Governor Evers, as the educator that he is, we wanted to make sure that school systems had the resources to address those mental health issues.
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  So that's really exciting that we were able to get that into the budget this year.
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  SPEAKER1: Thank you.
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  SPEAKER5: I would just mention three things.
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  First, we know there's staffing challenges in our schools and it -- the Department of Public Instruction announced a new program designed to help school
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  districts attract, retain and prepare special educator teachers.
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  And that's called the Special Educator Induction Program, which will support 300 special educators around the state working with CSAs to provide training and
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  connections. So we're really excited about that work.
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  In addition, the department is taking undertaking a strategic planning process right now, and we're inviting family members, students, teachers, staff to
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  provide feedback and information on our mission, our values and our work to help us drive the work in the years to come and track the progress of
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  of those goals.
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  So we're excited about that.
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  And then lastly, I'd mentioned that state Superintendent Dr.
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  Underly will be doing her annual State of Education address on September 21st, and she'll be sharing a lot of initiatives during that time.
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  SPEAKER1: Thank you. Thank you.
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  And and you are very right to focus in on training, attracting and retaining special educators that -- they have such an important job.
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  And we definitely need more people who are trained that way.
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  And we're grateful to say we're one of the many recipients for the Kids Get Ahead initiative and very happy about that.
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  Anything from you?
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  SPEAKER6: Yeah, our team teaching and learning is also focusing on civic engagement.
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  So we will be releasing at the end of September a statewide K-12 civic scope and sequence plan.
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  That's exciting. And when you like when you go to a school like this and you see the ways that we're teaching children to be engaged as active citizens, not
• 8:42
  just in their own communities, but in our global community and thinking about what they need to care about and how they need to stay engaged.
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  I think that the civic scope and sequence plan will tie really nicely in with with those conversations.
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  SPEAKER1: So thank you. I think it'll be great to give teachers a guide on such an important topic too, and not that there aren't standards already, but to provide
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  them even more guidance in how to deliver a high quality program.
• 9:06
  Absolutely. Thank you.
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  SPEAKER7: So I want to highlight some of the things that we're doing in school nutrition.
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  We have a local food to school program where we received funding from USDA, and Oregon is participating in that program where you're getting
• 9:24
  some local beef from a nearby farm, as well as some vegetables from a different farm.
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  So getting local products into our kids meals is very exciting.
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  And thanks to Sarah, she's done a lot of hard work there.
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  SPEAKER1: She sure has.
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  SPEAKER7: But we do also have an AmeriCorps farm to school program here at Oregon, where -- I know you're struggling to get a member so far this year.
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  However, this is the seventh year that Oregon has participated and just some of the great things that happened last year.
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  There were at least ten community events where they were promoting farm to school programing.
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  So like they had a great apple crunch with local apples, a couple food drives, they had a multi lingual family night and they do harvest of the month.
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  And that also ties into the grocery store located in Oregon, where they promote the foods that are being promoted for the harvest of the month.
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  So that's pretty exciting.
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  When you take things that you're learning in school and you see it at the grocery store, getting those healthy foods into kids is really important, and I
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  think that really helps.
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  Just another thing, I know that cost of food is really high, so efforts from USDA, we're going to be
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  sending schools some additional funding to help support.
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  Um, food purchases so that we can continue to get the healthy foods into schools.
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  SPEAKER1: That's great. That's -- that's really great.
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  And I hope we get some AmeriCorps volunteers or applicants, I should say, because that's a paid position.
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  I hope we get some applicants soon because I really appreciate the work they did and and what they brought to our district.
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  And they've worked so closely with Sara and our director of Learning and Student Achievement because they play a dual role here.
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  SPEAKER7: Yeah, getting those members into classrooms and teaching kids about where their food comes from.
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  And Tricia has been very integral in helping raise that salary or the stipend for the members so that we can
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  attract more members to the program.
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  Yes. And be able to keep them for a longer period of time.
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  It's a
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  SPEAKER1: great experience.
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  Yeah, I'm really, really appreciative of the work of the people who have done this before.
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  Sara Is there anything that you'd like to add?
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  SPEAKER9: Um, I
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  SPEAKER8: think, I mean, this school year we are excited to kind of be out of the rebuilding phase in our department and be able to start this school year
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  off as normal. We are fully staffed.
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  We have plans to continue purchasing local foods.
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  We are going to start our Around the World Day menus again in October and we're pairing with one of our German teachers to make sure that our first Around the
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  World Day menu aligns with our German week.
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  I believe -- I might be wrong.
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  You're right. You're right.
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  SPEAKER1: It's when our German sister school is sending students here.
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  Yeah.
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  SPEAKER8: So it's I think it'll be an amazing school year and I'm very excited to jump into it.
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  SPEAKER1: Well, and I'd also like to say thank you to you because you were able to retain all of your food service staff from last year to this year.
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  And I would bet that there aren't many school nutrition programs that were able to do that.
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  So that's pretty
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  SPEAKER8: wonderful. To have the same team going into this school year.
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  SPEAKER1: Consistency helps so much.
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  Absolutely. So as we know, schools provide many services to our students and to our families, and the demands of the profession, as have been discussed already,
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  are more than they've ever been.
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  So what are your thoughts in respect to this?
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  And I'm opening that up to anybody here.
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  SPEAKER4: I'll just -- I'll just start.
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  I mean, I, Governor Evers and I know that schools are the heart of the community and we have done quite a bit to try to continue to invest in the school systems.
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  But we need to do more.
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  We've got a lot of teacher vacancies within the different school districts, which makes it a lot more difficult for those that are here today.
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  And, you know, as a public health nurse myself, I realize that teachers do take care of just a wide variety of issues within the school system, and we need to
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  provide resources for them to be able to do that and truly respect them for the professionals that they are.
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  And what a great investment in our kids in Wisconsin to have these folks that are willing every day to come in and teach our
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  kids a million things!
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  This school is fantastic.
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  And I just think that we are so lucky in Wisconsin to have such a dedicated teaching workforce.
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  SPEAKER1: Thank you.
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  SPEAKER5: I would agree. And our teachers today are being asked to do so much.
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  They have a huge responsibility not only in educating our children, but also taking care of their well-being.
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  Yes. So important.
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  And it's teachers.
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  It's school nutrition professionals.
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  It's our bus drivers, it's our facility staff.
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  They all play such an important role.
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  And just just a huge thank you to all they do.
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  SPEAKER1: Well, we always one of our core values in the school district is the idea of the whole child and that we teach the whole child.
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  And that's because if you don't take that approach, they don't -- It's very unlikely your students will be as ready to learn as you would like them to be if
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  you're not able to think of them as holistic human beings with needs and work to provide for those needs.
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  When we're able to do that, that's when the best learning occurs.
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  So it's it's a complex job, but when you make all the pieces start to fit together, it's provides the best thing for students.
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  Anyone else?
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  SPEAKER6: I just want to add that for all the educators who are listening, we hope that you know that we see you.
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  We see the dedication that you bring every day.
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  We see often what a thankless job education is, and we want to support you in any way that we can.
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  And we are working behind the scenes at the Department of Public Instruction to do that.
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  But we really see you and we are so grateful.
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  And to the families and community members, we hope that you're expressing all of that gratitude often and frequently, and supporting your educators, because
• 15:25
  what they do here matters and they are such an integral part of our community.
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  So thank you.
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  SPEAKER1: Thank you. It's a wonderful way to spend your life's work.
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  It really is. I can't think of anything better.
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  What messages do you have for educators as we begin the school year?
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  For families or for students?
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  And Laura, you kind of just you just kind of gave your message, really?
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  Anybody else?
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  SPEAKER4: I would say that on behalf of the administration, thank you for the work that you're doing.
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  We know it has not been easy these last several years, and we know that what you do is nothing short of heroic.
• 16:07
  And again, as a nurse, we talk a lot about those social determinants of health and how what we do within hospital systems is such a tiny fraction of how
• 16:16
  healthy folks are.
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  And what teachers do is even bigger percentage of making sure our kids are healthy throughout the day.
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  So thank you.
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  SPEAKER1: Thank you.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER7: I just want to say thank you for being very supportive of the school nutrition program here.
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  Sarah does a great job making sure that kids have access to breakfast and lunch each and every day, which is so important because without food you can't really
• 16:44
  learn. I think there's many opportunities that are in the forth coming, but just making sure that you continue to,
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  you know, do the farm to school stuff because teaching kids where their food comes from is important.
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  And I love the fact that, you know, there's so many different things that you're doing bringing local foods into this school district.
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  The kids are very fortunate to have you.
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  SPEAKER1: Well, thank you for helping us kick off the school year.
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  We really appreciate your time.
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  And we are honored you've chosen the Oregon School District for your first day visit.
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  Thank you, everyone.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER10: Thank you.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER1: Thanks for tuning in this week.
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  We are so glad to have our students back in classrooms.
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  It's going to be a great year.
• 17:33
  Remember that you can find links to all episodes of Inside the OSD and submit topic ideas on our website at
• 17:41
  OregonSD.Org/Podcast. You can find this podcast anywhere you can find podcasts.
• 17:48
  Make sure to subscribe if you're listening on one of these apps to get notifications on the most recent episodes.
• 17:54
  We'll see you next time on Inside the OSD, where it's all about the kids.