Mr. Meier goes to Milwaukee County Circuit Court

[Note: I promise I will stop talking about the school board eventually…]

So, I think a somewhat stylized story would go like this:

• A little over a year ago, a reporter from FOX6 was fishing for a story on threatening phone calls to school board members (maybe inspired by this goldmine?) during the pandemic and asks the Wauwatosa School District for copies of voicemails they received and any related records—police reports, emails, text messages, those crazy ransom notes where all the individual letters are cut out of different magazines, etc.¹

• Board member Mike Meier sends her his voicemails.

• It turns out that most of the calls school board members get are really boring and not crazy at all. But there is one from a former board member who keeps asking, “What is going on with this $170,000 AVID contract, Mike?”

• The reporter asks herself, “Indeed, what is going on with this $170,000 AVID contract?”²

• She files more record requests, digs around, and learns about an assistant superintendent named Kristen Bowers encouraging the district to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a program called AVID that teaches students study skills and techniques to help them do better in college.

• The not boring part of this story is that her husband, Brett Bowers, works for AVID. Kristen asks the district’s legal counsel at some point about whether her spearheading this whole thing is A-okay. Legal counsel responds: “Yeah, maybe not? Maybe don’t be personally involved with it, because it could be seen as a conflict of interest?"

• Kristen Bowers sees the word, “Yeah…,” and begins sending lots of emails regaling district staff with AVID’s great benefits, encourages them to do a larger rollout of the program, puts together the $170,000 proposal and takes it to now-former-Superintendent Phil Ertl who signs it. The school board looks at it, asks no questions about what it’s supposed to do, doesn’t wonder what the other bids came in at (Trick question. There were no other bids.), and says, “Great!”

• The reporter publishes all of this in November, 2021.³ Bedlam ensues.⁴ Kristen Bowers goes on administrative leave. There’s a police investigation (no charges are filed). Eventually the school district pays her $116,758.44 to just go away already.⁵ The school board tells everyone, “We’re going to take a closer look at this AVID contract now.” Surprisingly, they decide not to go forward with it.

• But wait, there’s more.

• The school board also holds a closed session meeting to “confer with legal counsel regarding personnel matters” but instead spends the meeting berating Mr. Meier and asking him, “Why did you send the reporter so many voicemails? Geez...”

• Mr. Meier harrumphs, “My voicemails are not on the agenda right now. So talking about them is a violation of Wisconsin open meeting laws.” Afterwards he calls the reporter and asks her if he maybe sent too many voicemails. Reporter says you can never send over too many voicemails.⁶

• Now-former-board president Steve Doman hears about Mr. Meier talking to the reporter again, sends angry email (see page 3) saying he violated board policy for talking about confidential matters and removes him from the policy committee. Mr. Meier says, “Well you were already breaking state law by discussing these things during a closed meeting so...”

• Mr. Doman appoints someone else to the policy committee, and they have some policy meetings without telling anyone or providing notice to the public. [Aside: Maybe? I feel like there are differing accounts of this but can’t find the source.]

• FOX6 publishes a half-dozen more stories about all of this. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

• Mr. Doman resigns from the school board in May, 2022, claiming someone sent him an email threatening him and his family.⁷ [Aside: Was this all an elaborate plot by the reporter to get that story she wanted all along?]

• Mr. Meier hires an attorney and threatens the school board with a lawsuit. He makes a list of demands like, “Get rid of policy committee” and “Do training on open meeting laws.”⁸

• In May, the school district’s insurance company brings in attorney Lori Lubinski to (sort of) mediate. There is a long discussion, and it seems like everyone comes to some rough consensus on next steps that don’t involve suing each other.

• Nevertheless, in September, Mr. Meier files two complaints with the Milwaukee District Attorney alleging violations of open meetings laws.

• The school district’s insurance company’s lawyer returns for another long meeting. Says she sent all the stuff they kind of agreed to four months ago to Mr. Meier's lawyer but never heard back.

• Mr. Meier says he has some more complaints to add including that board members were collaborating on the strategic plan via Google Docs and that this also constitutes a violation of Wisconsin open meetings laws.

• Ms. Lubinski calls these alleged violations of Wisconsin open meetings laws “novel” mostly because Google Docs didn’t exist when they were written. She also says that the Milwaukee DA has 20 days to file a lawsuit. If they don’t—either because they don’t think they have a case or they’re just really busy—then Mr. Meier can file his own lawsuit if he wants.

• The Milwaukee DA doesn't file a lawsuit.

This gets us to today (well, last week). On November 23, Mr. Meier filed his own lawsuit against former-president Steve Doman and the rest of the school board. They have 45 days to respond.

I don’t think this is available online, though you can show up to the courthouse in person to see it. Someone kindly forwarded it to me.

From the introduction:

This case is about the Wauwatosa School Board of Education disenfranchising an entire voting district by denial of the rights of their elected representative and obstruction of compliance with Wisconsin laws. The Wauwatosa School District is controlled by a faction of the Board. This faction makes political decisions in secret and retaliates against anyone who challenges them by silencing the public and their elected representatives.

The faction lost its first leader, Steven Doman, after Doman stripped Michael Meier of a committee assignment and appointed others in secret after Meier alleged the Board violated the public records law.

The Board told Meier and the public it would comply with the law, but the pattern of retaliation continues. Every time, the Board disenfranchises Meier's constituents. Most recently the faction of the Board made secret changes to the sexual education curriculum (human growth and development curriculum) development process, directing District employees to scrub previously reported survey data. The result of the scrub altered the survey results in favor of the faction's political theories. A faction of the Board directed the changes to decision data in secrecy in the weekend prior to a Monday, August 22, 2022, vote. The faction of the Board acted in secrecy as to who was involved in directing the data change process and in secrecy as to criteria for data-removal. This secret process excluded some members of the Board and excluded the community.

Enough is enough; it is time to hold this board accountable to the Open Meetings Law and by extension to hold the board accountable to its own constituents. It is time to return democratic control over the Wauwatosa School Board of Education.

Most of the lawsuit repeats many of the same events I’ve noted above but in a slightly more desiccated tone. And claims all the same violations of open meetings law in addition to the new allegation that a “faction” within the board secretly directed administrators to scrub the results of a survey that were used to assess community perceptions of a new but contentious revision to the district's sex education curriculum.

He’s asked for a judgment finding the board in violation of open meetings law (which I think is usually a fine of several hundred dollars) and a reimbursement of legal costs. He’s also asked that the board’s August 22 decision approving the new human growth and development curriculum be “ordered voided and rescinded as unlawful.”

What to make of this?

I don’t know. Reversing the August 22 decision to approve the human growth and development curriculum seems like the biggest potential impact, but it also seems the least likely to happen. Notwithstanding the maximally conspiratorial tone with which it’s described, it just seems unlikely. But I’m not a lawyer, and I’d have a hard time articulating any specific reasons why I feel that way.

What I can tell you is that I really like the second paragraph quoted above. It has a certain cosmic grandeur to it, like you might find those same words crawling up the television screen in big yellow text against the inky darkness of space:

It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although Steve Doman has been destroyed, the Faction’s troops have driven Mr. Meier from his hidden base and now pursue him across the galaxy.

The Faction, obsessed with finding Mr. Meier, has provided public notice of a special school board meeting to be held on December 5th at 6 pm to lure him back…

Maybe I’ll see you there.

1. Open record: runaway relationship. FOX6 Podcast. November 24, 2021. (around time 2:50).

2. And also, you might ask, “What is AVID?” AVID is Advancement Via Individual Determination. It it is a college preparatory program that, according to its website, offers “more than just a training and a few classroom resources. AVID provides schools a direct line of support to regional teams, data tracking, planning guides, and self-assessments” but which Katherine Riebe, a former member of Wauwatosa School District’s Equity Team, in this FOX6 article, described as just another “bandwagon” that school districts like Wauwatosa jump on and off of “every three or four years.”

3. FOX6 investigates: School administrator encouraged academic program that paid her husband. FOX6. November 14, 2021.

4. Technically the bedlam was already ensuing before the article was even published.

5. Wauwatosa school board discussed public records in secret. FOX6 segment. May 9, 2022.

6. 6-figure payout for school administrator accused of violating policy. FOX 6. February 7, 2022.

7. The Wauwatosa School Board president has abruptly resigned after he said he received a threat to him and his family. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. May 14, 2022.

8. Letter from Attorney Benjamin Cross. May 4, 2022.