“The reconstruction of schools is in full force,” Gothard said. “And you saw half of what we have going on right now at Sherman. If you go further north to Blackhawk and Gompers, it looks very similar. We have four brand new schools going up. They are shared campuses. Sherman and Shabazz, and Blackhawk and Gompers have full-steel erected walls going up. Those schools will reopen about a year from now. We will be doing ribbon-cuttings at those facilities. It’s been amazing. And what the community should know is that we have three more being planned as well. We’ll have ground-breaking in October at Cherokee Heights and at Sennett Middle School and at Toki-Orchard Ridge. We’ll have eight schools being built at the same time. And there are two more, Crestwood and Anana, still on the way. Those are the last of the three phases in this three year run.”

Also new this year is a new districtwide wireless device policy that was mandated by the state.

“Our current policy that will begin on the first day of school will be that cellphones are to be off and away —wireless devices, not just cellphones — for elementary and middle school students throughout the day, so they will not have them,” Gothard said. “And at the high school level, they are also off and away, especially during instructional time with an exception at lunch time. And part of the reason is we have 2,000 students in our high schools. We have an open campus at lunch. It’s almost an hour long for that lunch. And our students are very mobile. There are students who have different classes and may leave campus during that time, so they are in transition a lot. Also many times they do need a time to check in, whether it is a work schedule or a practice schedule. Sometimes, they are responsible for younger siblings or family members. So we want to make sure that we are giving them time to at least stay caught up.”

One of the big initiatives that MMSD is kicking off this year is Building for the Future to place the district on a firm foundation of being attractive to families moving to Madison as the city and surrounding area continue to be the fastest growing area in Wisconsin.

“That’s our operational plan where we are currently undergoing another phase of engagement to talk about how our schools are utilized,” Gothard said. “With that, we may consider proposing to the Board of Education some changes in school boundaries. Those are often not the most popular subjects to talk about. But our community is growing. And there are a few things I want to make sure that we can do. One, we continue to be a destination school district for all. In order to do this, I want to make sure that families have access to the schools of their choice. And our policies have that. Where you live, you may have an internal transfer. We’re not looking at changing that so much as making sure that we have the kind of space necessary for a high quality learning experience.”

Another feature Gothard is considering is expansion of 4K throughout the district.

“Since 2010-2011, we started with a 4K half day program,” Gothard said. “We are now majority full day. And we piloted last year for the first time ever a five day per week program. It had 15 students. This year, we have 130 students signed up for a full day, five-day 4K program. And this is free to members of this community for families who want to open enroll if they choose to. And it is my goal to make sure that this is a free program for all children who reside in Madison that eventually they are in a full day, 4K five day a week program and we have it in every one of our elementary schools. So some of the boundary shifts that we are going to look at are to ensure that we have capacity for that emerging program as well. We see this as being really important for our families to give them a good first experience for their child’s education. It’s also to provide for them a community that they can rely on. The school community that you meet with your child sometimes turn into your most important people. Rarely are we raising children alone. They are on teams. They are in activities. They are certainly in classrooms. And the support network that we can create being part of a destination school district is of the most importance.’

Having a full day 4K program is a win-win-win situation. Not only does it ease childcare expenses for the parents, it also helps the children in their academic development.

“If kindergarten readiness is a benchmark that we want to make sure that students are ready for, the earlier and most consistent approach that we can have is going to help that as well,” Gothard said. “And there is plenty of research showing that early start — I’m talking birth to three even — pays off in incredible dividends later in life, whether it is vocabulary development, certainly reading and just about any aptitude of education, it’s going to pay off.”

And Gothard feels that MMSD is making way in terms of reducing the academic inequalities.

“I met with a group of leaders in their School-Based Leadership Teams today,” Gothard said. “We do have a good number of schools that are experiencing gains and achievement for Black students in reading and in math. Attendance is up in many places. But what we need to do is work as a system. We need to start, as I mentioned, with 4K. And we need to make sure that achievement in the Madison Metropolitan School District is not by luck or by chance. It’s by design and intention. We’ve got to look for every opportunity we have to strengthen that, to look for good bridges, whether that be with families or with our community partners. We’ve got to create both nurturing and cultures of high expectation in every one of our schools. And that is really the work at hand. What it takes is consistency, to have leaders in place and to have then consistently in place, to have a school staff that isn’t going through turnover year in and year out. Of course I want people to retire after they have earned the right and the ability to do that. I want to bring up our younger early career educators as quickly as possible. But together, we are the ones who are called to make a meaningful impact on the disparities that we have seen for too long in Madison and too long in the United States.”

For the 2026-2027 school year, MMSD expects to have approximately 25,000 students enrolled, several thousand more people than the city of Middleton’s entire population. There are many societal and economic forces at play that influence the school’s student population.

“The high mark in recent years was about 27,000 students around the time of the pandemic,” Gothard said. “Things dipped a little bit since then. That’s no surprise. I think many districts saw that. But there are a lot of other factors going on as well. We are in a growing Dane County. There is the lack of affordable housing is a factor in that. Certainly some of the things that we’ve seen with immigration. One has to wonder if that is a factor in some of our enrollment. But we are working really hard to understand what we can do to be the destination school district for all students. Bolstering our programs. We have teachers and staff who want to be here. And that is such a good sign that we’ve turned in an important and positive direction that we can build on in the future.”

Madison’s growing population doesn’t guarantee that Madison’s student population is growing at the same rate.

“We could tell you how many children that are in affordable apartments, single detached homes, single attached homes and market rate apartments,” Gothard said about Madison’s growth. “I can tell you based on a study that we’ve done how many children will be the result new housing in that area. It’s a little bit of this. And I think the Twin Cities, my experiences there too, are very much like Madison. Those young, single folks whom you talk about who may not have children, but work here, the one thing that seems to happen in both communities is that they may move on. And by the time that they want to start a family, they may have said, ‘You know what? I want to raise my kid there. I want our family to live there and raise our family.’ There is a lot of that which happens too. People do feel a good sense of community. They know that we have strong schools. And I want to do nothing more than build that and continue to keep people here who want to stay here, but also draw in new people who are really looking for a place to live, work and learn.”

Through building construction, policy changes and hard work to make MMSD instruction effective with all students, MMSD Superintendent Joe Gothard is pointing the district in a positive direction to deal with the multitude of challenges that the district is or will face. And that bodes well for the future.