Highlights from the School Board Meeting on December 12
School start times, board meeting start times, pickleball paranoia, revisions to school board policies, and more.
→ Since 2000, Wisconsin state law has prohibited schools from starting before September 1. This article from last year says that special interest groups like the Wisconsin Restaurant Association support the law because it ensures steadier income during the final weeks of summer. This even older article—despite being written as a series of “Myth:…Fact:…”-style debunkings—by then-president of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association Ed Lump agrees that this is kind of true but also parents like it and do you want to see small businesses fail and stop paying the property taxes to fund your schools?
Fortunately, given that the pandemic and associated lockdowns have made everyone slightly more anti-social, there’s a waiver for that. From the Superintendent’s proposal to submit a waiver request to the state’s Department of Public Instruction and start school earlier next year:
Whereas, the process of instructing students on how to effectively apply academic behaviors, self-management, social awareness, responsible decision making, and positive relationship building are critical in addressing learning loss from COVID-19; and
Whereas, the Wauwatosa School District has experienced an acute decline in behavioral decorum in its schools and a decline in academic performance, as measured by the Forward Exam, Aspire, ACT, and State District and School Report Cards post-COVID-19
[…]
Let it be resolved that the Wauwatosa School District is seeking a waiver, per Wisconsin PI 27.03(5), to address student learning loss, school safety, and the social-emotional growth of all our students.
Superintendent Demond Means was careful to emphasize that the resolution before the board was simply to request a waiver and that a request to actually start school earlier next fall would not come until February after extensive discussion and “listening sessions” with parents, teachers, and other stakeholders. He is also only interested in requesting this waiver for the 2023-2024 school year and does not anticipate starting school early in subsequent years.
If the waiver is granted and the school district decides to start school before September 1 next year, teachers would return to school on August 21-24 for “professional learning” and children would have school August 28-31. This would allow teachers and staff “to focus on building trusting relationships with students” and “develop a culture of collaborative ownership in developing school rules and expectations.”
Board member Jenny Hoag supported the resolution saying, “I did not realize the reason the September 1st date exists is because of tourism, and obviously I would always want us to do what’s best for our students. Not necessarily what’s best for tourism in Wisconsin. That shouldn’t be our primary objective.”
Board member Mike Phillips was somewhat more skeptical: “This feels like we’re setting something up to be repetitive. […] it feels like what we’re starting to talk about is a permanent shift to this. If it is a one time thing what happens to the high school kids—what happens to the rest of the community—that don’t get this the following year?”
One parent said she wanted to know what these “social awareness” lessons would look like and suggested maybe these lessons could be confined to the kids that actually need it rather than the entire school.
A mother with a child who has an IEP said that as a new enrollee in the district, she found the beginning of the school year very hectic and thinks more planning time in the beginning of the year could be beneficial.
Finally, one teacher from Whitman Middle School said none of these efforts at team building and establishing strong relationships with students are particularly new, and “it doesn’t matter whether you do that September 5th or August 28th.”
The board approved the resolution by a vote of 6-1. Mr. Phillips dissented.
→ You might have seen the headlines, but in case you haven’t:
From the Wall Street Journal: “‘It’s Been Awkward.’ Pickleball Is Pitting Neighbor Against Neighbor in Noise-Conscious Communities.”
From the NY Post: “Pickleball players banned from NYC park after turf war with kids”
From ARLNow in Arlington: “More residents are threatening legal action because of pickleball noise”
From the Lake Oswego Review: “Old Town neighbors not satisfied with city's plans to muffle pickleball noise”
A wave of pickleball-related enthusiasm and angst is engulfing the nation, and Mr. Meier wondered about its effects following the presentation of the Recreation Department’s annual report this week. While he was aware that “[pickleball] is a raging thing in the senior community” and “seems way bigger than anything we envisioned,” he also worried about neighboring houses being less than appreciative of “the noise of the ball hitting the racket incessantly into the evening.”
The Rec. Department representative, after tallying up for the board this past summer’s revenue from serving thousands of residents across hundreds of recreational activities, soberly acknowledged that “there's a unique noise that comes along with outdoor pickleball” and assured the board that the department’s response to the increased demand is at the “forefront of our thoughts right now.”
I, for one, will be following this story closely.
Other non-pickleball-related comments from board members included questions about “inclusive programming,” how many students with special needs were participating in recreation department activities, and a suggestion from Board President Eric Jessup-Anger to start mailing paper copies of the yearly rec. guide to parents again, because “they miss having it” and the one available online is “harder to review.”
→ The district’s Director of Technology, Jamie Price, recommended permanently increasing “the annual technology budget by $186,000 to address disparities in our classrooms related to broadcast and display capabilities.” While the 2018 referendum allowed the district to upgrade digital whiteboard displays in some schools, they would like to see these improvements rolled-out district-wide which means shifting some of the associated costs from school-level budgets into the district’s technology budget.
Classroom resources take up about 60% of the overall budget and primarily include things like student Chromebooks, devices for teachers, and computer labs. About $280,000 of the $1.17 million classroom budget goes toward displays.
Mr. Price also discussed numerous proposed infrastructure upgrades to the phone system, wireless system, and other core infrastructure totaling about $2,775,000 between now and 2025, a large portion of which will be federally subsidized.
One student representative on the school board thanked Mr. Price for highlighting these issues. “My American Public Policy teacher regularly has to answer his phone by putting it on speakerphone and picking up the receiver,” he lamented. Mr. Price recommended that his “teacher […] submit a help desk request about that because that is actually a pretty easy fix.”
→ The recently formed Legislative Advocacy and Finance and Resource subcommittees provided brief updates to the board. Board member Leigh Anne Fraley said that the Legislative Advocacy committee is “excited to be bringing to the board at the January 9th meeting our five legislative priorities” that they believe align with the district’s strategic objectives and will be most beneficial to students. They are also working with district communication staff on an engagement plan to help the community understand their efforts.
For the finance committee, Mr. Meier said that on January 17th they would be going over school safety reporting compliance, the 2021-2022 financial audit report, the five year facility planning project, and open enrollment recommendations.
→ The school considered a resolution to change the start time for future board meetings from 7 p.m. to 6 p.m. Mr. Meier worried that it might interfere with parent’s after school schedules, Ms. Hoag said she’s “exhausted after these board meetings” and that attending meetings until 11 or 12 p.m. is “not a sustainable thing.”
Ms. Muehlfeld thought “we should try something different” and that “we could always go back to 7 p.m. if we find this isn’t working.”
The board approved changing the meeting time for future meetings to 6 p.m. by a vote of 6-1. Mr. Meier dissented.
→ Ms. Hoag reported on recent efforts by the policy committee to revise their long-outdated school board policies (covered previously here) and their work with NEOLA consultants to make sure they align with current state law. There was some discussion on policies related to expulsions and suspensions, guidelines for students with disabilities, due process rights, and policies regarding school social events.
Mr. Meier, while generally supportive of the revisions, did note that
Maybe where we got into trouble was that […] before NEOLA there weren't nearly so many policies, and we we started NEOLA and NEOLA had a policy for everything, right? I mean you're seeing it now, it's like, ‘Oh my God,’ okay? Well once you start a structure that has a policy for everything you can't cancel the maintenance subscription, right? You can't not buy the annual updates which seems to be what we did.
[…]
I mean you cite a law and if you don't update it you not only are not stating the correct law in your policy you're stating an incorrect statement of the law because the law changed and so you've actually gotten worse. If you use NEOLA a little bit or start it and don't pay the annual subscription, you're actually worse off.
→ During a period for final comment on non-agenda items one parent addressed what she considered the “elephant in the room”—a fight at Wauwatosa East high school (according to this article which I think also contains the videos she refers to) on Friday evening, December 9th. “What I am very worried about in this district,” she said, “is that the message is clearly not getting through to students who choose to use depraved indifference. And they are so out of order as to not intervene and help their fellow classmate. They decide to video.”
“What are we gonna do about that?” she asks and suggests that this be placed on the agenda for the board’s next meeting.