On Monday, Sept. 12, after its regular board meeting, the Hudson School Board met for its annual meeting, to review the year and the upcoming budget cycle. 

“We also think about all the things that the district does,” Superintendent Nick Ouellette said. 

“We don’t just educate children. We feed them, we transport them, we provide child care and facilities and grounds and maintenance.” 

The district struggled immensely to fill a significant number of support positions before the beginning of the school year. This year, they welcomed 69 new certified staff, 55 new support staff and five new administrators to the district. 

Last year, staff served over 3,500 daily meals, transported 3,500 children to and from school each day, cared for nearly 550 children before and after school and responded to more than $20 million in damages to facilities after a large hail storm in the spring. 

Finances

“School financing in the state of wis is really complicated with dollars coming from numerous local, federal and state sources based on formulas that at times seem to defy all logic,” School Board Treasurer Heather Logelin said. She continued explaining that as a result of this, 57% of funding for the Hudson School District comes from local property taxes. 

“I understand that you want to know that your dollars are being used well.” 

Chief Financial and Operations Officer Bonnie Stegmann went into some of the highlights of the now approved 2022-23 budget, including the description of the 2022-23 school year levy which culminates in a tax of about $55.8 million. 

The main factors facing the district are: 

• Revenue limit restrictions. “This is the second year of the biennium budget and that has had a $0 increase per pupil. Very challenging for districts,” Stegmann said.  

• Declining enrollment.

• Addressing instructional needs of all students.

• Retention and recruitment of staff members. Stegmann credited the human resources and communications departments in the district for their continued efforts in customizing marketing for specific positions, implementing retention bonuses and approving competitive staff compensation packages for all employment categories. 

• Maintaining class sizes within size guidelines.

• Long term maintenance for all facilities. 

Achievements

The Hudson School District showed great strength in academic achievement among students over the last year. 

“The district exceeds expectations on the state report card with a score of 80.3, it’s one of the highest we’ve had,” Ouellette said. 

Composite ACT scores of Hudson students were about two points higher than the state average. Among these high achieving students were 205 AP scholars, 62 college credit earners through Project Lead the Way, 102 newly inducted National Honor Society members and 121 scholarship recipients. 

“We’ve had lots of wonderful accomplishments in the district over this past year. It doesn’t mean we rest on those accomplishments. Every year we continue to try to continue to build on those things,” Ouellette said. “Myself, having three children in the district, feel very fortunate to have them here.” 

Part of those efforts in the district occur outside of the nine month school year. 

“Just because school was out for the summer doesn't mean that we weren’t educating or working with kids this summer,” Ouellette said. 

The district had over 800 children participate in its kindergarten through fifth grade summer school classes. 

“Just because school was out for summer doesn't mean kids were done learning or participating,” Ouellette said.