Under new guidelines adopted by the Ripon School Board at its Monday meeting, PE 9 no longer will be available for ninth graders starting in the 2025-26 school year.
Ripon Area School District Superintendent Mary Whitrock congratulates Ashley Bradley for qualifying for the Wisconsin State Music Association State Honors Jazz Band as School Board President David Scott stands next to them.
That doesn’t mean they don’t have to take a physical education class. Instead, students can choose from several options, including individual and team activities under its new heading, PE 9/10, and Strength and Conditioning 9/10.
The PE 9/10 course covers a range of activities, including individual sports such as badminton, tennis, pickleball and golf, and team sports like basketball, volleyball, soccer and flag football.
Strength and Conditioning 9/10 will cover the use of the weight room, where students will track their progress and follow a workout plan each day to increase their stability, flexibility, strength and conditioning. The focus will be on proper technique and form of different exercises, safety and spotting in the weight room and recording data on their workouts.
Juniors and seniors can choose from similar new courses, PE 11/12 and Strength and Conditioning 11/12.
Also new for next year is Outdoor Life/Adventures PE 345. The class is designed for juniors and seniors and is limited to 20 students. It is designed for the outdoor enthusiast and will expose students to a variety of outdoor recreational activities.
The majority of units will be held outside (winter/spring). A fishing license and a small fee for fish bait and materials will be required. Course activities include fishing, archery, cross-country skiing, inline skating, biking, open water fishing and disc golf.
These changes only affect the physical education course offerings, according to the class guide. Unchanged is the option for students who participate in a varsity sport to get permission to receive a half credit in lieu of taking a physical education course during their junior or senior years.
All Ripon High School students are required to earn a total of 1.5 physical education credits throughout three separate school years as part of their graduation requirement.
Two other new classes for next year are Principles of Leadership 1 & 2. These courses focus on leadership attributes that can be identified, modeled and taught. The class is primarily experiential-learning based and emphasizes the importance of communication, character, personal growth, and building strong relationships and teams.
“It’s a great course if you want to go to college, the workforce or just in general for yourself because leadership skills are very important,” School Board member Denise Martinez said. “It will cover a lot of ground.”
The Academic & Career Planning Guide for the 2025-26 school year, which includes all of the new courses, was approved unanimously. Also passed were the new physical education courses as well as the leadership courses.
In other action
In other School Board action,
➤ Gina Reichling was hired to be a third- to fifth-grade part-time teacher for the Odyssey Academy of Virtual Learning.
➤ The board also welcomed and applauded pianist Ashley Bradley for qualifying for the Wisconsin State Music Association State Honors Jazz Band. She auditioned last February and received notice in April that she had qualified. Bradley rehearsed with the band for several days during the summer, then performed in a concert with the band in October, which was recorded on PBS.
Bradley was the only pianist who qualified for the band.
Ripon High School junior Carly Johns stands next to her artwork, which took first place in the Wisconsin Herd BMO Art Contest. The Wisconsin Herd will where a jersey featuring her drawing.
“It was really cool to be able to work with a lot of other really good musicians throughout Wisconsin,” the junior said.
➤ Carly Johns, a junior, won the BMO Art Contest. She beat out 3,000 students from 25 schools to have her design put on a Wisconsin Herd jersey. It is the second year in a row that a Ripon School District student has won the contest. The jersey design will be unveiled on Dec. 11 at the Oshkosh Arena during a home game.
The next meeting of the Ripon School Board will be Monday, Dec.16 in the community room at Ripon High School. The meeting begins at 6 p.m.