Last Monday's School Board Meeting

Last week I talked at length about the school district’s restorative justice program, but that was really only a small part of the 4-hour school board meeting on June 13.

So, a few additional highlights:

→ Graduation: Everyone talked about how great the graduation ceremony was. I believe them. But the interesting thing to me was that there were 16 valedictorians. Back in my day we only had TWO valedictorians. In statistics, they call this a “ceiling effect.” It’s not a bad thing per se, but it does suggest some limitation in your ability to measure excellence.

→ Board vacancies: Monday was the last day to submit an application for the recent school board vacancy. As of last week’s meeting, one person had applied.

→ Buckets of money and no place to empty them. The thing about getting money from the government is that there’s almost always strings attached. You have to spend it by a certain date or spend it on specific things. If they think you’re not following the rules, you might get audited or have to *gasp* give the money back.

And sometimes the way government largesse is advertised to the public differs from the actual rules and restrictions that those receiving it must abide by. For example, the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) passed in March, 2021, distributed hundreds of billions of dollars to state and local governments to “to ensure that they are in a position to keep front line public workers on the job and paid, while also effectively distributing the vaccine, scaling testing, reopening schools, and maintaining other vital services.” (Source). But the City of Wauwatosa only spent about $800,000 of the $21 Million it received in ARPA funding on Covid-19 mitigation efforts and only $950,000 to make up for reduced revenues during the pandemic.

The rest of it went toward things like new parks and water pumping stations which, to be fair, were certainly allowed, useful, and in some cases probably necessary, but really didn’t have anything to do with Rescuing America from a pandemic. And residents could certainly be forgiven for being mistaken about what counts as an allowable use of government grants and what does not.

Hence the confusion among the public about how the School District is using its Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Funding. This ESSER funding, from what I can tell, came in three installments.

• ESSER I distributed $333,000 to the Wauwatosa School District and was authorized by the federal government under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act in March, 2020.

• ESSER II distributed $2.6 Million to the district and was authorized by the federal government as part of the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplement Appropriations (CRRSA) Act in December, 2020.

• ESSER III distributed $3.0 Million to the district and was authorized by the federal government through the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act in March, 2021.

There were also a few grants that fell outside of ESSER funding as you can see below.

Source: Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) Use of Funds Plan

I’m not sure what “Governor’s Discretionary” in the table above is. I thought it might be these GEER grants that the Governor asked the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to distribute, but I don’t think Wauwatosa was a recipient. Nor can I find details on the FEMA Grant. The “SPED ARP” I suspect is separate ARP funding for Special Education programs.

In addition to the above, the School District Superintendent, Dr. Demond Means, informed the school board that an additional $1.2 Million has been given to the school by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instriction. You can watch the discussion here, but the gist from the Superintendent seemed to be that the potential uses for the money were relatively open-ended:

Right now, we’ve presented to you a balanced budget. So, that additional $1.2 Million dollars could go toward closing the potential shortfall we may have for the 23-24 school year budget, or you may utilize it for the 22-23 school year budget, depending on where you would like to direct those funds.

But some individuals during the public comment period thought the $1.2 Million, as well as what remains from the various ESSER grants, wasn’t being spent in the way those funds were intended to be spent: to deal with and correct problems created by the pandemic and to help the most-affected students catch-up to their peers. One asked that the:

CARES fund not be used as a budget healing measure, because the intent of those funds was to help, especially, the students most hurt by COVID and to help them get back some of the progress that they lost. And I see those funds being best used for students with disabilities who really suffered during the COVID years.

In response, the Superintendent emphasized that the state legislature had, in fact, instructed school districts to use ESSER funding to close budget shortfalls. And that the supplementary funding from Governor Evers (which Dr. Means referred to as “CARES dollars” and which leaves me somewhat confused about what exactly he’s referring to) be used as supplementary funding so school districts could continue to function effectively.

Another woman complained:

I am still trying to figure out how our district used our nearly $400,000¹ we received in extra IDEA funds that was released by the federal government. So, how can citizens find that information out? If you look at our ESSER plan, have we truly done what DPI told us to do with that 20%²? It’s very clearly stated clearly on the DPI website how that money was to be used, who it was to be used for. If that was to be questioned […] how could we find out that indeed we met what DPI’s requirement was with that ESSER plan? So I am interested, as Mr. Meier and Mrs. Muehlfeld said, […] how do we see how this money and these dollars are being spent?

In response, the District’s Chief Financial Officer assured her that the money was being used appropriately and allocated according to rules and requirements set forth by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

I believe him? But he also didn’t really answer the part of her question where she asked how the public could verify such a thing. To some extent, the spending is laid out in this document, but this is only a proposal, and doesn’t tell us what actually happened.

→ Community comment on the consent agenda. One teacher from Whitman Middle School stood up during the public comment period to say that she was concerned about the number of teacher resignations (16 resignations from Whitman alone) in the School District and that she hopes they conduct and analyze interview data to figure out what's going on.

The consent agenda actually listed 17 teachers that were resigning from many different schools, so I’m not sure where the teacher’s figure comes from. It may have been an aggregate number over the last several months. I did receive an email from the District’s Director of Human Resources sent to all parents that said: “The turnover rate in the District during the 2021-22 school year was 16%. The previous year (2020-21), the turnover rate was 11.26%. Although this increase may initially seem alarming, once again, this increase in turnover is not unique to Wauwatosa.”

However, the email also said that “Of the teaching staff who responded to the [exit interview], 13% were pleased with their pay,” and “36.4% left to work in a different district.” It’s hard for me to square those two facts with “this increase in turnover is not unique to Wauwatosa.” If other districts are seeing similar turnover, why are such a large percentage of teachers leaving to work at those other school districts?

→No cushy office space for you, administrators: In 2017, a Capital Improvement Study was completed which motivated the eventual referendum in 2018 to fund the construction of multiple new school buildings and a host of long-overdue renovations and repairs. Today, with nearly all of the new construction complete, the Director of Building and Grounds plans to begin a new study in 2022. In the meantime, he proposed four new projects for the coming year, totaling $580,000:

• Replace Condensate tank at Wauwatosa East High School. It’s old, leaky, and looks like something you might find in the boiler room of a decommissioned battleship. ($120,000)

  

• Repair the masonry at Roosevelt Elementary. It is in disrepair and causing leaks. ($80,000)

  

• Repair the Madison Main Entrance sidewalk to improve ADA accessibility. ($30,000)

  

• And, uh, all those recent administrative hires would like some new office space?($350,000)

To which Board Member Leigh Anne Fraley kindly responded:

So…easier for me to get behind projects that are for the schools…and I know we hired a bunch of staff…So, are there any other options for ensuring we have productive workspaces for staff? I'm not saying I don't trust what's being brought to us I just—for me, I always want students to be at the forefront and it's one of the higher budget dollar amounts.

Board Member Mike Meiers was more candid:

In a year where we have to vastly cut back on our capital spending from over $1.0 Million to $580,000, we're going to take 60% of that money and build nice offices for high-paid administrators? No, I don't support this at all.

Now, I voted ‘no’ on most of these positions. I kind of saw stuff coming here. If hiring these new administrators—if we'd have been told at the beginning that as a follow-up [we’d] be asked to authorize 60% of our capital budget—like a third of a million dollars—to give them places to sit after we sign the contracts for their salaries? This is the kind of thing that leads the community to believe that we have this fat administration structure pay-wise and that we're short-changing the children for the administrators and short-changing the teachers as well.

Superintendent Means, to his credit, responded that while there was space to house these new administrators, there were a few issues:

• The sensitive nature of these particular administrative jobs—which include [bunch of titles that didn’t exist 20 years ago] —necessitate offices rather than cubicles since they often deal with sensitive family and student issues.

• It would improve collaboration and efficiency to have these administrators close to their departments instead of stashed wherever there was available office space.

• It’s not just high-paid administrators but teachers on contract that provide district-wide support (and so aren’t based in a particular school).

Board Member Jenny Hoag said it seemed like there was a lot more remote work and hybrid work schedules that should make more space available. Board Member Mike Meiers said lawyers and doctors often have cubicles. A member of the public stated that she appreciated these criticisms and that parents in various listening sessions had expressed a desire to see these new administrators interacting with children, so maybe the lack of office space in the Fisher Administrative Building will force them to visit schools more often.

Superintendent Means said he would remove this item from the capital expansion plan this year.

→ Fallout from AVID contract scandal: I talked briefly about the AVID contract previously:

In 2020, [Mary Jo Randall] emailed school board members and spoke up repeatedly during the public comment period of school board meetings about the suspicious lack of transparency surrounding a $170,000 contract for AVID, a college and career readiness program, that the school entered into in February, 2021, with limited debate. Her hunch proved right, and an investigation by FOX6 Milwaukee revealed that the Wauwatosa School District assistant superintendent Kristin Bowers, who was a proponent of the contract, failed to disclose until much later that her husband was employed by AVID. She was placed on administrative leave in November, 2021, and resigned in January, 2022, following an internal investigation.

This has had considerable repercussions. Not only has a school administrator resigned, but so has a member of the School Board.

In response, the School District hired CliftonLarsonAllen (CLA) to conduct an audit of its contract and procurement processes and make recommendations to bring it more in-line with current best practices.

CLA grades different aspects of the procurement process on a scale of 1-5. Five means processes are clear, up-to-date, easy to revise, and what all-the-people-who-care-about-these-things say you should be doing. One is like, “Do you even have a process? How do you guys actually manage to buy things?”

CLA rated everything about the School District’s procurement process as either a 1 or a 2. Written procedures are out-of-date, in conflict with other procedures, or do not exist at all. Some processes and procedures are known only by a single employee. When he or she leaves, the knowledge is lost. In other instances, a single individual has too much authority. For instance, a single person might be able to both submit a purchase order and approve it. This is great if you want to commit fraud (and for lots of other reasons, like efficiency, which, let’s be honest, is probably why it’s allowed), but not so great for a School District trying to only spend money on non-fraudulent things.

Overall, it seemed like a useful audit that found a lot for the School District to improve. However, I didn’t see any investigation of the particular problems that led to the AVID scandal which seemed to be related to undisclosed conflicts-of-interest. The report just said, “The District was informed that the audit would not render the information the District was seeking with regards to AVID, due to the immature state of procurement procedures and lack of adherence to a systematic and controlled financial environment.” I guess I would have wanted a little more information here…

→ In Other News. The district renews its apartment lease for special education students (Price: $1,510 per month). File this under random things I had no idea schools did.

One public commenter noted a $12,000 bill for the translation of one Individual Education Plan (IEP—used for special education students) into Vietnamese. She asks what’s going on there. The School Board members seemed kind of curious too.

Contracts. Contracts for Chromebooks (Price: $300,000 for 1,120 new ones), contracts for career technology courses (Price: $50,000 for the year), contracts for air conditioning maintenance ($44,500 for the year) and waste pickup (Price: $65,860 for the year with a 5% increase in years 2 and 3).

There was also a preliminary review of the 2022-2023 budget. I didn’t actually hear a whole lot of new information beyond what was already covered in the previous meeting, so I still suggest you read my post from the other week for details.

1. I think she might be referring to the $389,000 of SPED ARP funds in the table above

2. She might be referring to the note on this School District webpage that describes ESSER funding: “NOTE: No less than 20% of the ARP ESSER allocation must be used to address learning loss through the implementation of evidence-based interventions.” (Source)