Megan Miller for Beloit School Board

Plan for 2025 – 2028

This is what I would like to see for the three most urgent issues facing our district.

I. Academic Achievement

We need a clear, data-driven strategic plan.
- A strategic plan includes SMART goals with benchmarks for ongoing monitoring and opportunities to make changes for improvement.
- Ensure that our continued academic growth encompasses all student demographics.
- Use data, planning, and input from students, families, and teachers to ensure that we are meeting the needs of all of our students.
- Create the next plan by sustaining the materials, training, supports, and practices that produced growth and by evaluating the best way to change what did not work best for our kids and teachers.
- Invite the same group of community stakeholders to help develop the plan and open the planning process up to new stakeholders, as well.
- Ensure that our plan engages community members across language, socio-economic, and other barriers.
We need to increase input from teachers and students about what is working well and what needs to change in order to meet all of the academic needs of our students.
- Increase board advisories made up of staff, families, students, and involved community stakeholders.
- Board committees should report out student and teacher feedback gathered by surveys, focus groups, and discussions.
  - Before adopting the new math curriculum, there was a year-long pilot that included in-depth discussions and feedback from students, teachers, and families. This is a model we need to use to guide decision-making for services and materials provided to classrooms.
Take the feedback gathered from the numerous community listening sessions and incorporate this into our next strategic plan

II. Social and Emotional Wellness and Learning

Community Partnerships
- School and community mental health providers along with other service providers including the City and County should be allowed to provide data and insight for how we can improve our services within our district as well as increase our partnerships to provide more resources to kids and families.
- All of this should be incorporated into the strategic plan for ongoing monitoring and evaluation
Increased Classroom Behavior, Social, and Emotional Resources
- Many student behaviors stem from unmet needs and with proactive support, we can continue to reduce negative incidents in classrooms.
  - This requires specially designed staffing and programming to identify and support children so they can learn to manage themselves and positively engage in classroom learning
- Increased staffing and spaces for children who need to regulate.
  - When negative student behaviors occur, it takes away from everyone’s learning. We need more staff and more spaces for children to go to allow learning to safely continue in classrooms.
  - Classroom teachers manage classrooms, but many behaviors and needs go beyond what a classroom teacher can reasonably be expected to manage.
  - We need more staff and resources to ensure that the Code of Conduct is fully and fairly enforced.
  - We need more staff and resources so if a child IS able to regulate and return to class, they have the support they need to safely resume learning.

III. District and Financial Stability

Balanced Budget Process with Sustained Community Input
- Our ad-hoc committee has been a successful way for community stakeholders – including teachers – to advise the development of the budget.
- The board and district should continue to be financially conservative in our short term spending and planful about the future.
  - Continue to update and evaluate the 10 year facilities plan
  - Ongoing evaluation for all resources
- With more than thirty years of underfunding for our district, it requires collaboration and creativity to continue to balance our budget without harming students and teachers.
Creating a Positive Work Environment for ALL Staff
- High performing districts have consistent leadership and consistency in our classrooms. The board should continue to follow policies and practices that create and sustain a culture and climate that retain staff at every level.
- When we are financially able, we need to appropriately compensate our staff for wages lost due to raises not keeping up with inflation.
- We need to ensure that teachers have a voice on policies that impact their working environments.

Thank you for electing me! I am ready to run for a third term and continue working hard for all Beloit children.

About Me

I moved to Beloit to start teaching at Beloit Memorial High School in July 2010. I never imagined that a job opportunity would turn into a love story. Beloit has been my home now for nearly fifteen years, and everyday I grow more in love with this community. The passion and dedication of the teachers I worked with and that of the people of this community are unmatched by any other place I’ve ever lived. I am proud to have had the opportunity to teach at Beloit Memorial High School for five years, and now I get to raise my three children in our public schools.

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I am proud of the work we have done since I was elected the Board of Education.

Our district outpaced the state in academic growth on the 2023-2024.
Beloit was recognized by DPI for its equity work in reducing behavior incidents.
We have seen an approximate 28% reduction in behavior incidents.
Our students graduate with three times as many dual credits and work-based learning opportunities as the state average.
Our participation and achievement in AP classes is growing across all student demographics.
We have prioritized literacy, investing $2 Million of ESSER money into a literacy and bi-literacy curriculum with on-going professional development, producing year over year academic growth since 2021.
We engaged with students and families to select a successful math curriculum, which is also producing academic growth for our students.
We have saved taxpayers thousands and thousands of dollars through debt defeasance.
We have continued to grow our career and technical education partnerships for grades 6-12.
I helped initiate and participated on a Bilingual Ad-Hoc to increase our responsiveness to our bilingual community.
We served our community more than one million meals during COVID distance learning, and continue to provide free meals to our kids and families every summer.
We have completed a strategic plan that produced growth in our academic achievement.

There is so much more I am proud of; far too much to list!

As a teacher, my job is to empower students. As a school board member, my goal is to empower our community. I want this opportunity to serve the city that has given me everything. I want to be a voice for our teachers and a force for equity and accountability because every single child and family in our school district are valuable and deserve every opportunity to thrive.

Thank you for your support and I look forward to serving on our Beloit school board.

Education

Bachelors Degree History and Secondary Education UW-Platteville 2006
Masters Degree Leadership in Teaching Carthage College 2012
EdD in Education Leadership at Edgewood College anticipated Spring 2026

Work Experience

District Reading Specialist Parkview School District 2021 – Present
Reading Interventionist Whitewater High School – 2019-2021
Early College Specialist Blackhawk Technical College 2016-2019
Youth Librarian Beloit Public Library 2015-2017
History, English, and Reading Teacher Beloit Memorial High School 2010-2015

Volunteer Experience

All Beloit Children Literacy Program Beloit Public Library 2015-2017
Board President Little Turtles Playhouse 2017-2018, Board Member 2017-2021
Vice President of Congregation B’nai Abraham 2012-2019
Religious School Teacher Congregation B’nai Abraham 2012-2020
City of Beloit Equal Opportunity Commission 2017-2019
Beloit Public Library Board Member 2020-2021
Beloit Public Library IDEA Committee Chair 2020-2021
Beloit Public Library Strategic Plan Committee Member 2020-2021
School Board President January 2021 – April 2022
Various other volunteer experiences