Highlights from the School Board: April 10, 24

Out with the old, in the with new. Pricey new school safety initiatives.

[Note: This will be the only newsletter this week.]

April 24

→ On Monday, April 24, school board president Dr. Jessup-Anger thanked departing members Mike Phillips, Sharon Muehlfeld, and Leigh Anne Fraley for their service. Jessica Willis distributed some commemorative plaques. One of the student representatives thanked Ms. Muehlfeld for joining the board on the year that he was born. “It’s a pleasure to get to be here and say, ‘thank you’ as a person who has grown up in the district that you’ve helped care for.”

Victors in the recent school board election—Lynne Woehrle, Phillip Morris, Jessica Willis, and Liz Heimerl-Rolland—were sworn in and took their seats on Monday. They also had their first meeting, but it lasted only eleven minutes and consisted mostly of a brief presentation on the district’s March Financial Report.

District Superintendent, Dr. Demond Means, asked Chief Financial Officer, Keith Brightman, “So, how are we tracking, Mr. Brightman?”

To which Mr. Brightman replied, “We are tracking as expected.”

There was a short discussion—presumably for the benefit of the new board members—on the rules for competitive bids, what to look for on the monthly financial statements, and the format of the consent agenda, before the board began an inservice and stopped recording.

April 10

→ During the period for public comment on non-agenda items, one parent thanked the departing members of the school board for their hard work. Another parent expressed her displeasure that “one of your staff members said to an African-American child that, ‘I’m a big ugly guy who came to strip you of your spirit and tear your soul down.’” Although she noted that this individual has since resigned, she considered it to be intimidating, threatening, and traumatizing for the student. She also mentioned that she hears in meetings with community members that “it’s African Americans that are bringing the test scores down, it’s African Americans that are bullying, it’s African Americans that are causing a lot of trauma and a lot of issues in Tosa,” but that there are two sides to the problem, and African American students are also being traumatized, are afraid to go to school, and are afraid to voice their opinions.

Dr. Means promised the board that he would have a staff member follow-up with the parent.

→ The board unanimously approved the consent agenda which included the resignation of several teachers. Board member Leigh Anne Fraley said this left her “very sad,” and she hopes

When folks resign they are providing us with feedback as to why you're leaving, what we can be doing better, what we're doing well, that you hope we continue doing, etc. Because again, I hope that if one thing has been clear about my service, it's that teachers are what make this district what it is. So, I'm not going to name names, but you know who you are, and I really hope that we can continue to do all we can to retain our really high-performing, well-loved staff.

Mike Meier described one of the resigning teachers—East High School English teacher Jean Biebel—as “an all-star among all-stars.”

In addition to Ms. Biebel, resignations were also received from a math teacher at West High School, a special education teacher at Jefferson Elementary, a school counselor, two school psychologists, and a speech language pathologist. The consent agenda also included the hire of two new full-time teachers as well as several support employees and seasonal hires for summer school.

→ Ms. Shannon Izquierdo was unanimously confirmed as the new principal for Madison Elementary school at a salary of $108,500.

Chief of Talent Sarah Zelazoski said that Ms. Izquierdo was selected from among a pool of many strong candidates, while board member Jessica Willis remarked that, “I am just thrilled that we are getting such an amazing world of candidates” and that “we have some really phenomenal people who want to be in that position at Madison, and I am just thrilled to have met Shannon and had this opportunity to interview her, and I know that she's going to bring her passion for education and for students to Madison.”

→ Chief of Student and Family Supports Luke Pinion requested funding for a bevy new school safety initiatives. But first, he provided a recap of what the district has already done.

This included seemingly straightforward and easy-to-understand items like upgrading security cameras, having more teachers in the hall in-between classes, or rolling-out “Speak Up, Speak Out,” an anonymous tip line for students to report safety concerns, but also more nebulous things like “refining our student support team structures” to help students “behaviorally [and] academically, but also on a safety front as well,” and “a framework […] for restorative practices, trauma-informed care, and positive behavioral interventions and support.” You can see the full list here (pg. 5).

Mr. Pinion noted that while the district’s safety committee continues to work feverishly on additional initiatives, they had a number of one-time costs that they would like to get approved, including fees for several conferences and training items that had looming registration deadlines. Items presented during the meeting included:

• A two-day training for new Deans of Students provided by Mandt. Their website describes this training as, “Holistic evidence based training to reduce workplace violence.” ($8,700)

• Sending two district representatives to the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) National School Safety Conference in the summer of 2024 to learn best practices and resources around school safety. ($7,100)

• School Safety and Violent Event Incident Management (SSAVEIM) Training on deterring and responding to school shootings. Website here. ($2,200)

• Based on requests from administrators at the middle and high schools, daily after school security at secondary schools for the remainder of this year and all of 2023-2024 provided by a company they have previously used for security during football games. ($98,000)

• An external safety audit of all fourteen school buildings. ($80,000)

• Listening sessions for parents and student to, in the words of Mr. Pinion, “lift student and parent voices into this conversation beyond the external committee that we have, beyond the podium, or the microphone in front of the board.” ($10,000)

Following the presentation, there was an exceedingly long discussion between staff and school board members on various topics including:

• the necessity of an external safety audit given that some of the school buildings were just rebuilt in 2018 (Dr. Means: “we should do it every five years,” and “we did a lot with the internal safety assessments […] but there's something to having an external safety audit that we can profit from going forward”),

• whether the Mandt training included training on physical restraint (Mr. Pinion: “absolutely not a direction we would want or need to go in”) ,

• whether this training would actually be useful and relevant (Mr. Pinion: “we may be able to very well personalize it with lived situations from Wauwatosa […] and to bring in our own examples of safety concerns”),

• whether some of these items might be redundant (Mr. Pinion: “I don't see overlap in the items we've presented, at least nothing that would be so repetitious that we would feel like it's sort of a waste”),

• whether we really needed to hire an outside consultant to run listening sessions (Dr. Means: “young people talk differently when it's not an administrator or staff member of the district, and I think parents talk differently as well”), and

• how will we know if all of this is actually helping (Mr. Pinion: “anecdotal and hard data,” including “feedback from our Deans” and reductions in “significant incidents” and “discipline referrals around endangering behavior, alcohol and drug use, those types of things”)

Jessica Willis said that while she strongly supports the Mandt training, she wondered how well it will work for some students:

Some of our students don't feel psychologically safe going into buildings. It's something that I bring up often, right? So, not just our black students but our students with disabilities and our LGBTQIA students. So I wonder with this training what type of culturally responsive pieces there are, what type of training is there around some of our most marginalized students?

Mr. Pinion said the district had other programs and personnel to handle some of the issues she mentioned, but that they would “circle back” and make sure that “cultural piece” was being hit.

Board member Leigh Anne Fraley expressed surprise that a mere thirteen anonymous tips had been submitted through Speak Up, Speak Out thus far. Mr. Pinion agreed. “From my perspective that’s low,” he said. One of the student representatives suggested it might be nice to get some actual instruction on “what it provides and how it can be useful.”

During the period for public comment, soon-to-be board member Lynne Woehrle asked how many other providers had been reviewed prior to choosing Mandt and suggested that a local organization like the Wellpoint Care Network “would be much more likely […] to really center how the conflicts around race, class, and gender are impacting our school district.” She said that as someone who has worked in the field, “there's a lot of money in getting school districts to pay to train for safety. It's a big thing right now, [and] a lot of people who weren't in that market before are jumping into that market.”

Mr. Pinion thanked her for her comment but emphasized that “this is two days of many opportunities we have over the course of the year to build our personnel.”

Another parent requested that whenever the board describes these initiatives as being intended to benefit all students that they please make sure to include “those with disabilities” particularly the 18-21 year-old students in the district’s Transition Program. “We can't exclude or eliminate the voice of students and parents just because a student doesn't fit within one of the four walls. They're still in our system.”

The board unanimously approved the approximately $200,000 in proposed spending.

→ The Board’s policy committee also presented several revised school board policies for approval. These included policies on the board’s educational philosophy, rules for animals on district property, conflicts of interest, student code of classroom conduct, policies on hazing, harassment, bullying, threats of violence, suspensions and expulsions, alternative expulsion processes, student discipline, and the suspension or expulsion of students with disabilities.

This was not as interesting as you might have expected. Or, perhaps it was exactly as interesting as you might have expected. Many of these policies contained no changes and of those that did, the revisions seemed relatively minor. There may have been some more spirited debate during the policy committee meeting itself, but I didn’t attend that and nobody records those.

They were all unanimously approved.