Parents ask school board not to re-appoint Steven Doman as board president.

He is re-appointed anyway. Then resigns.

I.

During the May 9th meeting of the Wauwatosa School Board, several angry parents asked for Board President Steven Doman to either step-down or for the Board not to re-elect him to another one-year term as president.

One mother of a high school student:

I compel you to stop this from happening. I compel you to reduce the risk for the district, and the only way I think we can do that is by removing president Doman from his presidential role, and I ask you all to consider asking him to resign from the school board, thank you.

A father with children in the school district:

Dr. Means [the district superintendent], we need you to be a champion for us. We need you to be here for the people. We need you to correct this school board when they are doing things illegal and behind closed doors that they don't want us to know about. There's members up here…they're in a good old boys club—I'll say it how I see it—and you're causing us problems. The person that leads that good old boy club *points finger* sits right there: Steve Doman. He needs to be removed from his position as school board. Gone. He has made this school board look horrible throughout the whole community. Throughout the whole state. He needs to leave.

Complaints from the public were in response to many issues. Some of them were related to Doman’s perceived anti-police bias and both his and the board’s seeming inaction about school violence. One mother, referring to a school board meeting earlier in the month where many parents expressed their concern about fights and students bringing weapons to school, said:

Board member Fraley at least acknowledged that there was a problem. But what about the rest of you? Your silence sends a message, and it's not a good one. Don't you care? Why isn't this on the agenda? Why aren't you speaking to us about this? Why aren't you acknowledging these concerns? […] As one parent asked you at the last meeting, “What will it take?” […] How much more serious does it have to get until you talk to us, and address this, and put it on the agenda? What are you waiting for?

But mostly, their complaints seemed to revolve around potentially illegal, closed-session discussions of the AVID contract scandal from late last year.

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.

The investigation by FOX6 began after they had filed an open records request for school board members’ voicemails. Expecting to find angry parents threatening board members about COVID-19 protocols, they were intrigued by a voicemail from former-board member Mary Jo Randall asking questions about the AVID contract:

Amongst the records [school board member Mike] Meier turned over in response to the request was a voicemail from Randall, asking questions about the AVID contract. In the podcast episode, St. Hilaire said this voicemail piqued her interest and ultimately launched FOX6's investigation.

When Mr. Meier divulged to a reporter that a closed-session of the school board—ostensibly to “discuss personnel matters with legal counsel”—was used to instead criticize him for his over-compliance with open records requests, Steve Doman told him he’d violated board policy and removed Mr. Meier from the School Board’s Policy Committee. Lawyers have become involved, with Mr. Doman apparently making use of the school district’s legal counsel.

II.

While I think there are probably good reasons for not responding to public comments during meetings—conversations can devolve and quickly become combative, meetings have specific items on their agenda that they’re intended to accomplish, and it appears the school district is taking a number of steps outside of board meetings to address the problems raised—it still feels discordant to spend the first 25 minutes of the meeting hearing impassioned pleas from parents to rescue their children from the bedlam and violence engulfing their schools¹, only to have the board say nothing and move on to deciding how much per-diem teachers should be paid for attending training sessions on the new English Language Arts curriculum.

Or to hear a half-dozen calls for the school board president to resign because parents think he’s a disgrace, and then immediately hold a secret-ballot and vote 5-2 to appoint him for another year as president with zero comment. And maybe Steve Doman is actually a really good guy and does a lot of important work behind-the-scenes that is hard for the public to appreciate. But if so, I found it odd that, despite being willing to make him president again, no one was really willing to explain why.

Instead, the only real acknowledgement of the surrounding controversy was a cryptic statement prepared by Mike Meier that he read almost every motion put before the board on May 9th:

Considering factual information communicated to me in emails from the board president and the superintendent, considering factual information communicated to me in voice communications from the superintendent with me, using whatever wisdom, logical thinking, education, and experience that I possess, it is my conclusion that I have formed a reasonable belief that there is an unacceptable risk that as a voting member of the board that information needed for my decision on this vote could have been withheld from me, and I will oppose this motion.

I’m not sure exactly what this means, what risks he’s talking about, what information he thinks was withheld from him, or what factual information led him to these conclusions, because he didn’t ever elaborate.

III.

As I was writing this, I came across another FOX6 article from Thursday, May 12, reporting that Steve Doman had just resigned—two days after being re-appointed as School Board President. The article says that in an email to the Superintendent, Demond Means, Mr. Doman said:

I received an email today that I can only perceive as a threat to the safety of myself and my family. Because of this threat I can no longer serve in my capacity as a member of the Wauwatosa School Board so please accept this as my immediate resignation.

However, the article also implies, without saying it outright, that this “threat” was really just an email by former-board member Mary Jo Randall requesting his home address so she could file an official complaint with the district attorney about the alleged violation of state open-meeting laws.

Overall, I find the story a little mysterious and incomplete. Was Steve Doman really threatened? If not, why did he resign? Why does Mike Meier feel like he’s not getting the information he needs to vote on things like how much per-diem teachers will get for attending English Language Arts training? Why does the school board appear so unresponsive to parent’s concerns? I don’t know, but I’m sure FOX6 will be on the case.

1. To be clear, not everyone thinks it’s terrible. One father thought the school district was doing much better and suggested that some of the parents complaining might just be racist.