By TRAVIS ANDERSON | N-O-W Superintendent
Wow, it’s hard to believe the first quarter of the 2023–2024 school year is already behind us! Our students and staff continue to do a tremendous job positively navigating through any challenge that arises. I think everyone in our entire district can be very proud of our school. As always, thank you to our entire community for the support that helps our school continue to grow and thrive.
We have so many educational highlights from the first quarter of the school year that it is extremely hard to mention all of them, but it is exciting to see our students and staff represent our school in such a positive manner while taking advantage of every educational opportunity, even beyond the walls of our physical school building.
As an example, this past quarter, we had elementary students travel to Wildcat Mountain State Park, the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, and Devil’s Lake State Park for outreach programming to make curriculum and real-world academic connections. Also, the Brookwood FFA Dairy-Judging Team traveled to the World Dairy Expo in Madison, and the team placed 16th out of 116 teams in the dairy-judging competition, which is also an amazing accomplishment!
Our fine arts department continues to thrive both in and out of the school building, and that department has accomplished a lot in the past several weeks as well. The Brookwood Fine Arts Department this past quarter had students advance to the sectional competition of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Speech and Dramatic Arts Association theatre competition, seven fifth-grade students participated in a Performing Arts Fair, and two of the seven students were selected to attend the Regional Arts Fair as well.
Our high school choir was invited to perform at Viterbo University’s Choral Festival, and our high school band was invited to perform alongside the UW-L Screaming Eagles marching band for a college football game to publicly display their talents. The band students even wore vintage marching band uniforms that had been in storage for 20 years! Be sure to catch a concert or theatre production whenever you get a chance. You’ll be impressed by what Brookwood’s Fine Arts Department has to offer.
The Brookwood Art Department continues to thrive as well, and be sure to check out the students’ artwork on display at our parent-teacher conferences in late November, or take a peak at their artwork when you are in the school building for an event. You will be surprised at the quality of their work! Our students are very talented, to say the least!
Academically, our students are doing very well and continue to represent Brookwood on a larger stage whenever given the opportunity. Recently, our Brookwood High School math team of 28 students competed in the 50th annual math competition at UW-Platteville, where our team placed third overall and even five students placed individually. What a great accomplishment!
Our Family and Consumer Education classes learn about different cultures and make authentic food to build learning connections with course content.
We had 26 junior and senior high school students attend the Wisconsin Education Fair and Career Expo to learn about career opportunities from several different colleges and universities, and we have 34 students who are taking college level courses and receiving high school AND college level credits through accredited universities.
Our elementary implemented an entirely new literacy curriculum, and our teaching staff continues to work tirelessly to ensure all students are learning at high academic levels. It’s amazing to see all of the academic progress and learning that takes place on a daily basis at Brookwood!
Brookwood was well represented with fall athletic accomplishments as well. There were more than 20 student-athletes who received all-conference recognition, and we even had our girls’ cross-country team qualify and compete at the WIAA state meet, plus a member of the boys cross-country team qualified to compete individually at the state meet. Congratulations to all of our fall athletes for their individual and team accomplishments. They all represented our school and community very well!
As you drive by the school, you also see a lot of excavating happening, and that will continue until the fall of 2025, when we hope all of our referendum projects are complete. We are excited to see the continued progress of the track, football field, and physical education space. It will be an amazing facility when it is completed in July 2024, and we can’t wait for our community to see the result. With all of the excess soil material, we have created several flat outdoor learning spaces, which will be great for our students.
The second phase of construction will include additions to the school building and work to be completed inside the school will be put out for bid in January, with work to begin around March/April 2024. Final designs are underway for that phase of the project, and things are progressing very well. The result will definitely be worth the wait!
There will be many updates posted on our website in the coming weeks and months, and we look forward to sharing them with you. It’s been a great quarter of the 2023-2024 school year, and continue to stay in touch with our district on a daily basis. Be sure to “like” our district Facebook page so you can view updates for upcoming events, student achievements, Students of the Week, Artists of the Month, All-Conference Athletic recipients, and just tons of other school-related highlights and information. Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and go Falcons!
