By Taylor J. Hale 

MMC Staff Writer

WISCONSIN RAPIDS – City Times staff sat down with School Superintendent Craig Broeren to get an update on school district developments and events. This month, Broeren touched on new classes coming to Lincoln High School, new laptops, and more.

New classes coming to Rapids

Two newly formatted classes will be available to students this summer at Lincoln High School (LHS). Students in grades 10-12 will be able to enroll in the Blended Strength and Fitness class, offered for the first time this summer.

The summer course allows students to earn .5 credits towards their PE requirement or elective, giving students the option to choose electives and classes that better suit their interests during the school year.

“The rationale behind that is it then frees up additional options for kids,” Broeren explained. “They can do their phy ed in summer so they can take other electives throughout the year.”

The new summer class would follow the same curricula of the Strength & Fitness course.

LHS students will also be able to enroll in the new American Voices class this fall. The course is a reformatting of the school’s American Dream class and offers students .5 ELA credit and .5 social studies credit.

The changes were driven from modifications to the school’s social studies and ELA programming.

Staff switching IEP writing software 

District staff members will be switching their individual education program (IEP) software. Leaders approved the district’s shift from Skyward to Oasys LLC for their administration software services on March 2.

Broeren said that this switch would not affect parents and students, and existing Skyward online portals will stay the same.

“Skyward will still handle the student management system,” Broeren said. “From a parent’s perspective nothing is going to change, from a staff perspective, it will change the interface for writing IEPs for special needs students.”

New Chromebook laptops purchased

Students at THINK Academy, Woodside, and Washington Elementary schools will have access to 96 new Chromebooks. The computers are used for school projects, online learning, and internet access.  The laptops were purchased with funding from the 2019-20 District Common School Fund budget.