Liz Heimerl-Rolland, candidate for school board

Part 3 in a hopefully-7-part series where I talk with every single school board candidate

Part 1: Daniel Gugala, seat 6

Part 2: Lynne Woehrle, seat 6

Liz Heimerl-Rolland is running for seat #5 on the Wauwatosa School Board against Chris Zirbes (interview forthcoming). She has a website. This is the third in a series of conversations I've had with school board candidates, and I hope to complete and publish the rest through February and March. I talked to Liz a month ago on January 27th.

Sometimes it’s useful to ask each of the candidates the same questions so you can compare their responses. I think some groups are already doing something like this, so I didn’t. I have some topics I'm interested in, but I generally let the conversations go where they want. Perhaps through this, in combination with other candidate questionnaires, forums, and meet-and-greets, you can come to a slightly more complete understanding of these people.

Also, a note. Unless people are very polished public speakers, they tend to pepper their speech with things like sort of, kind of, like, not to mention err and uhh. They double back on themselves to revise the beginnings of their sentences and sometimes do all sorts of things that are seamless when spoken but sound clumsy when read. I tried to remove most of those.

Why she’s running

When I ask Liz why she’s running, she says that when she realized some of the incumbent board members would not be running for re-election, she thought that it might be “a good chance to make some changes in the district.” Her kids are older now—her son is a freshman in college, one daughter a freshmen at East High School and the other a seventh grader at Longfellow Middle School—and she has the time. With her background in education, “It just kind of seemed like a good opportunity to hopefully get elected, right? Make a difference!”

On her background and experience

Liz has a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and after her student teaching was complete, she worked for the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) system in a Head Start classroom for pre-school-aged children. While she enjoyed working with children, it was her interactions with parents that she enjoyed the most. “There’s a lot of parental involvement built into that. And through that experience I was—I think I’m actually more interested in working with parents and families and not just directly with students all the time.” While there was a lot of help a teacher could provide students during the school day, “if the families aren’t aligned with what you’re doing or making healthy choices all the time, then you can really be impactful working with parents.”

She stayed home after her daughter was born, but simultaneously ran an in-home daycare business and completed a Master’s degree in the cultural foundations of education as well as a certificate in non-profit management. “Ideally, I wanted to open a non-profit focusing on families and parents. That’s not the route I took, and I ended up working at MPS in the admin building.” At MPS, she ran a restorative practices program for middle- and high-school students.

[I] worked at MPS for a couple years, doing restorative practices. I started and ran a peer jury program. So, working in local MPS high schools to try to reduce expulsions and suspensions. Instead of a student going to an expulsion hearing, their peers would hear—they’re like a jury. So they would kind of hear what happened, come up with recommendations for consequences or support, and then I would follow those students and manage their case.

I asked whether she thought the program worked.

It did. So it wasn’t just consequences. There would be things like—a lot of support given to the kids too. And a lot of what I did was the follow-up. But you know, teaching kids to be accountable and be responsible to their community as a whole. Like if you—I don’t know…if you do something negative in the school community, that just doesn’t impact you or your family, that impacts a wide net of people. And trying to get them to see that and either fix whatever harm that was or...I don’t know, there was a lot to it. But yeah, it was interesting, I did that for a couple years.

I ask her what she thinks distinguishes her from her opponent for Seat #5, Chris Zirbes. She admits that she hasn’t met him and doesn’t know much about him but thinks that her background in education is one of her strong points.

My entire background is in education. And business and management. SO I think I have the background to understand how school’s work. I’ve worked with like every level through like medical school. So I know—I don’t think I have as big of a learning curve going in. I think I can go in if I’m elected and be ready on day one. Because I kind of have that background. I’ve managed a lot of people. I’ve written and helped write strategic plans. I’ve written grants. I’ve reviewed grants. Again, I don’t know that much about him. I’ve volunteered in probably every aspect of the schools. I was PTO president twice at Lincoln. I’ve run girls groups. I did Girls on the Run, Girl Scouts.

On school disparities

At one point in our conversation, she mentions meeting with parents from Underwood Elementary and that while she believes “that we’re a really strong, good district” there are large disparities between the top and bottom-performing schools (like Underwood). While her kids attended Lincoln Elementary School which she described as “the number one public elementary school in the state,” it was useful to hear from other parents with much different experiences. While she was hesitant to draw any broad conclusions from her conversations on what the causes of these disparities were, she did think it was something worth further analysis.

I just think for the district, you know, look at the resources we have available and how are we going to better allocate those as needed and what changes need to take place. We shouldn’t have any school that’s scoring like 52% on the [DPI] report card. So, let’s look at the data, let’s look at what’s going on inside of that school and see what they need to kind of get their kids up to where they should be.

On her husband having served on the school board

While she feels her husband, Shawn Rolland, having previously served as a member of the school board helps her understand, “how much work goes into being a board member, how much time goes into being a board member, sort of the temperament needed to be—especially now in [this] climate—to be on the schoolboard, ” she does note that a lot of things have changed since then. “We have a new superintendent, [and] Covid that impacted our schools.”

I ask her what she thinks about the increasingly levels of acrimony among school board members since her husband left, especially between Mike Meier and other board members.

Umm...I don’t really know. I watch the school board meetings. As far as their personality differences, I don’t know what’s...I think that it’s unfortunate that it does look like that from the outside, because there’s a lot of important work that needs to be done in our district, and I think those kind of…I dunno. You can have disagreements. I think there’s been a lot of things since the spring of 2020 that have distracted away from the hard work and the good work that the district needs to and is doing.

I followed-up via email to ask her about the lawsuit between Mike Meier and the rest of the board and whether she saw any way to improve these relationships or rebuild trust between the board and the community.

First, I'd say all of that distracts from the very real, very important issues the board is responsible for. In my opinion, the board shouldn't be the main story or be getting really any attention at all. The attention and focus should be on our students, staff and schools. I'm an optimist and believe almost all relationships can be repaired IF both parties want it to be. I think at this point and since there will be at least 3 new members on the board beginning in January, it would be great to have an outside professional come in and 1. train new members and give a refresher on board governance and 2. mediate underlying concerns/trust concerns, etc. 

I also asked her (during our face-to-face interview) what she thinks is getting overlooked in the meantime:

The biggest concern that I would have initially is the discrepancies between our schools and the experiences that our students are having. I think that those should be closer to each other. There shouldn’t be this wide gap between those things. So I think that’s a huge focus.

I think there was learning loss that happened over Covid. And scores went down. So I think that we should be focusing on what we’re doing to bring those back up.

I think that Dr. Means has put together a really strong team and a strong staff that are doing great things. Each of the schools now has a growth plan. I’ve seen 5 presentations on those. So every school has 3 really clearly defined goals with clearly defined metrics and a plan to do better in those areas. And that’s going to be measured and looked at multiple times throughout this next semester.

On the role of a school board member

Liz feels like the lawsuit and frequent public disagreements between board members have distracted them, and the community, from what it is school board members are really responsible for.

You hire the superintendent. You hold the superintendent accountable to the policies and the strategic plan and that’s what the focus should be on. Because if you do those things, then all of our kids will do better. If your strategic plan is good and is followed through with fidelity from all stakeholders, if your policies align with that—that’s what the school board should be focusing on. So it’s unfortunate that there seems like there’s been a distraction from that. Because it just takes up so much time and energy from people...and then you don’t hear the good things that the school district’s doing and the improvements that we’re making and how successful a lot of our students are.

I ask whether she believes the superintendent is being given enough latitude by the board and the community to really accomplish everything they supposedly want him to do. I mention the superintendent’s proposal for a “strong start” program based on feedback he’d received from parents about the need to help students build better relationships with teachers and acculturate them to district norms. He later withdraw the idea after many (presumably different?) parents were unhappy about starting the school year earlier to incorporate it. She says that while she has “met with him a few times,” she’s not sure and that “Maybe a current board member would know that better.”

I then mention one of the claims from Board Member Mike Meier that the superintendent had been discouraged by other board members from sending so many kids to disciplinary boards and expulsion hearings.

My hope would be that whatever the policy says and whatever the strategic plan says that is what the board is following and that is what the superintendent is following. And I can only assume that our board members are doing that.

On school finances

At the time we spoke, Liz had recently met with the district’s Chief Financial Officer, Keith Brightman, and I asked what she’d learned. While acknowledging that she is not an expert in finance, she felt that Mr. Brightman had described a district in good financial shape. “We’re healthy,” she says,

We don’t borrow which a lot of districts do….some people are saying that we’re on a fiscal or financial cliff or something coming up. He said that was really planned. That there would be a small deficit next year but that there’s a lot of the federal Covid funds that were not used but that had to be used in the next school year. So he feels very confident about the financial safety of the district. He said he feels really strong about it.

On school discipline and behavior

“The behavioral discipline framework I think is really important,” Liz explains, “because it sets expectations across all our schools across the district.” She sees this effort as an example of the good things the district to get students used to school again after two years of on-and-off in-person learning during the pandemic. “And that’s what the board should be focused on. How are we doing in those areas then. Where are we making progress? Where are we falling short? And what can we do to do better?

I ask what she thinks of the many vocal complains from parents about violence in schools. She acknowledges that while “any fight in a school is too many” and “nobody wants to see kids fighting or anybody potentially getting physically hurt”, she “think[s] that the district is doing a good job. They have a plan.”

Parents’ voices deserve to be heard and no one should be scared going to school, no one should be afraid to send their kids into our buildings. So that’s unfortunate. I know we need to look at data and see what is happening in those schools, why those things are happening and then put all the resources necessary into changing it. I think it’s a balance between building that community back up and making everyone feel like they belong, so they’re not going to do those negative behaviors in that building. And then balancing that with accountability. You can’t make this environment unsafe for other people and yourself. So it’s like striking that balance between accountability and community building.

She likens a school to a family. “Inside of houses we all know that if you have a strong bond with your family, that your kids are going to want to listen to you,” she says. “If there’s a relationship, if there’s a shared interest, if there’s shared caring between everybody, then you’re less likely to see those negative behaviors.”

She wants to “support all students” including the ones “who are having those negative behaviors” as well as everyone who’s impacted by those behaviors. “You set high expectations and you give the support that they need to meet those expectations. And if they’re not met then yeah, there’s got to be a consequence for that behavior.”

When I went to the West PTA meeting, something that the principal talked about a lot was how a lot of these fights are starting on social media. So it’s all this stuff happening on social media and then it comes to a culmination at school. I think we can all do a better job. I think there’s like—all of us can probably do a better job on how we present ourselves.

I’m surprised by this and say, “Yeah, it makes me curious. Usually, boys are the ones that are more violent in general. But also it’s harder for me to think of them getting into tiffs on social media, and so then I wonder what the gender breakdown is between who’s causing all these fights.”

Liz says, “I have no idea. I know Dr. Means, in one of the board meetings, he’s giving an overview of the discipline and behavior for the district in February. To give it some context. I always think seeing the data and guiding your decisions based on that is what we should do and what we should focus on.”

[Author here: I had forgotten about this exchange, but our meeting took place before the board met on February 13th where they discussed the disciplinary stats for the district since the school-year began. I’ll toot my own horn a bit and mention that my hunch that it seemed unlikely that boys were the ones getting into arguments on social media that then spilled into physical fights at school was correct. I wrote about the data here, but the relevant number is that 62% of the most severe fights and disciplinary problems were among girls.]

On social media and contentious school board elections

Like some of the other candidates, Liz described an aversion to the social media chatter surrounding the school board race. “Honestly,” she said, “when I decided to run, one of the best pieces of advice I got was, ‘Don’t look at social media.’ So I do post things on my candidate page, but I’ve really tried to stay away from looking at anything on social media.” She followed the last school board race online and kind of regretted it. “I have learned my lesson and that was a good piece of advice. Don’t even look at it.”

Instead, she tries “to reach out to people, individually” by speaking to neighborhood associations, parent-teacher organizations, principals, and teachers. “I’m going to reach out to them and kind of focus my energy on that, because social media can be an emotional and a time suck. You can get really invested in it.

When I mention that school board candidates seem somewhat guarded when I speak to them, she agrees that the environment is “definitely more contentious than I can ever remember.”

School boards make national news now. I think that is so bizarre almost. I don’t know why it’s so contentious. I feel like people get really...there’s been like two things that have really been the focus of a lot in the district. And people feel passionately about those things…yeah, I don’t know. It’s interesting to watch, because my husband was on the board—gosh, like eight—I don’t even know, and ran uncontested both times. And now we have seven people running for school board. I wish that it wasn’t so contentious. I wish that it wasn’t like people feeling like they are against each other and more like, What can I bring to the board, my experience, my skills, my background? And it doesn’t always feel like that’s what the focus is.

In a follow-up email, I ask Liz what two things she thinks that the community has been focused on and whether that focus has been misplaced. She mentions the policies during the pandemic and the more recent revisions to the Human Growth and Development curriculum.

“I think we should be focused on making our schools better for all students,” she writes, “how do we improve academic achievement for all students, how do we improve the education for our students with special needs, how do we ensure our district is equitable and inclusive; especially for our most marginalized students, black and brown students, students that are part of the LGBTQIA+ community” and, finally, how do we ensure “that our students and families feel safe; physically and emotionally?”