GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The Green Bay school board voted to suspend some tests students take to help alleviate stress on teachers.
In December, the Green Bay Area Public School District sent out a survey asking staff members what they could do to better support them as they continue to navigate teaching in a pandemic.
“What we really want to do here is we want to make sure that we’re giving something to our teachers to help them survive this. They’ve talked so much about just kind of drowning right now and we are still in this pandemic,” Green Bay school board member Nancy Welch said.
Staff asked the board for fewer assessments, among other requests.
“I think they need not to have to test so much. They have to use their time for the teaching that needs to go on,” Welch said.
Green Bay school board president Eric Vanden Heuvel says the issue of assessments is a complex problem to solve.
“Through wanting to find a way to ease teachers, there’s a rhetoric that’s sort of been developed. Again, it ebbs and flows with each individual person, but that assessments are bad and initiatives are bad and professional development is bad and it’s not. Those are essential things for us to do what we want to do.”
While some assessments are mandated by the state and federal government, superintendent Stephen Murley says pausing or dropping other assessments could also come with monetary consequences.
The board voted to suspend all non-state or federal mandated non-coursework assessments for the rest of the school year starting Feb. 15.
At the Feb. 14 meeting, Murley can petition the board for any non-mandated assessment that would have a negative impact on funding if it is not given.
The board also voted for the district to put together a task force to write a proposal to present to the board that would reduce district required assessments by at least 25% starting next school year.
The school board also voted to update the district’s COVID-19 quarantine protocols.
To see the policies for vaccinated students and staff, click here.
To see the policies for unvaccinated students and staff, click here.
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