Welcome Back to School 2025-26

Dear SDSM Families and Caregivers,

Our teams have had a busy summer of learning, cleaning, building, and planning to ensure we are ready to go for the first day of school, and we wanted to share a few updates about what each of our teams has been working on this summer.  

Buildings and Grounds

Our facilities team was hard at work on our 10-Year Capital Improvement Plan, which included refinishing the high school parking lot, draining, cleaning, and regrouting the pool, a lot of work to clean up our grounds, and many more projects.  We heard a lot of feedback on the need to improve our cleaning processes, so the team has worked hard on a new plan that includes more cleaning hours per school.  You can see the plan in the video of the board meeting.  We will look for more frequent feedback from our staff about the cleanliness of our schools to measure the effectiveness of the new plan.  We are so grateful to our facilities team and our summer helpers for all their incredible work this summer!  

Instruction Updates

We are also very appreciative of the more than 200 staff who spent time this summer working on curriculum writing, attending training, teaching summer school, and co-planning.  Our new math leadership team was a great example of that work.  It is made up of staff from each school and level. They spent some time this summer envisioning what we want for mathematics education from Pre-kindergarten to 12th grade.  They will continue that work throughout this year as we investigate new core resources for our staff and students at the elementary and middle school levels.  The curriculum review plan for this year includes an examination of resources for K-8 Math, as well as ensuring Middle School ELA aligns with ELA at the elementary and high school level. 

2024-25 Accomplishments

We are really proud of our accomplishments in the 2024-25 school year.  A few to highlight are:

• 25 students successfully completed the Wisconsin Youth Apprenticeship program, including two who worked for SDSM.
• The Class of 2025 was awarded $1.4 million in non-athletic scholarships.
• Our 3rd Annual STEAM night, a District-wide family event was held on February 6th, 2025  We featured our SMHS Rocket Robotics team, who unveiled their competition robot for the crowd;  Children’s author, Melina Mangal presented and visited our elementary schools; students made 100s of keychains;  and we had 500+ students and their families/caregivers participate in the wide variety of science, technology, engineering, arts and math activities.  Here’s a short video of the highlights. Mark your calendars for February 12th, 2026 for this school year’s STEAM night event!
• Every single educator in grades K-5 completed the required literacy training under ACT 20. This is an amazing accomplishment as many districts will be taking the full two years to complete the training. 
• Over the winter and spring our Middle School STEM students participating in the NASA TechRise Challenge successfully built and coded a probe that was launched in a NASA weather balloon this summer. They have the probe back and will study the atmospheric data (and pictures!) that came back. 
• The high school Music Department commissioned a composer to create an original piece of music called One Art, which was performed for the first time ever by our musicians this spring. This was an awesome cross-curricular collaboration between our music and our art departments.  

Student Absence Reporting
For 2025-26, you will see some new procedures on reporting attendance.  You will see a button at the top of each school website with a link to the instructions on how to access Infinite Campus to report an absence https://www.sdsm.k12.wi.us/for-families/report-an-absence. You can also see a video that explains the process here: Final Absence Video  

On our 6-12 campus, we will also have a voicemail number for any attendance-related calls that our office staff will monitor instead of being able to call and speak to someone.  This will allow our office staff to focus on supporting our students and staff during the school day.  You will still be able to call the office for any emergency needs or to speak to a specific staff member about your child as needed, but attendance-specific calls will all be monitored through Infinite Campus and the voicemail line.  

Safety Procedures
As we continue to work on enhancing our safety practices, we have moved our part-time safety manager to a full-time position.  You will see new signage around our schools and receive consistent communication about when we do safety drills.  In addition, we will also be asking families to come into the office and sign students out who need to leave during the school day to ensure we are releasing the student to an appropriate adult. We will also ask families to sign consent for us to share information with any of the emergency contacts, outside agencies, and/or any other relatives who are not the legal guardian.  The forms will also have a place for you to indicate that you authorize someone else to pick up your child for appointments or illnesses during the school day.  You can pick up the form in your school’s main office at any time.  

Community Recreation Committee
We have had a Community Recreation Committee working since last fall on reviewing the possibility of a potential stand-alone Community Recreation Center.  This would allow us to continue our safety measures for students by moving the Fitness Center and walking track to a separate location and add additional gym space and facilities to expand our recreation programming to include more early childhood programming, options for school-age students, and senior classes that can be offered during the school day.  We are hosting a workshop on September 24, 2025, at 6:30 pm in the high school gym to seek community feedback on the project before the committee shares its findings with our board in November.  Please join us if you are able that night to provide your input. 

Come and Work for Us

If you love working with students and want to be a part of SDSM, we are still hiring for some paraprofessional positions, crossing guards, nutrition, and operations staff.  Please check WECAN to apply or email Jen Sielaff at jsielaff@sdsm.k12.wi.us for more information if you are interested.  

We were thrilled to welcome our new teachers last week and all staff back in our schools today.  We are prepared and ready to welcome learners on September 2nd!  We also have an open house for our middle and high school on Tuesday, August 26, from 5-7 p.m., and an elementary open house on Wednesday, August 27, from 5-7 p.m.  

Deidre Roemer
Superintendent