School board highlights: February 13

Mental health survey results, why are the girls fighting so much, pay raises, and a new tower for Wauwatosa East high school

→ Can’t we all just get along? During the period for public comment, former school board candidate Todd Dahlgren read a statement he drafted with current board president Dr. Eric Jessup-Anger that politely asked community members to please chill out about the school board election.

Having witnessed firsthand some of the toxicity on social media online and in the community during our campaigns for seat 3 last year,  we were concerned for what the current election for board seats could become. We believe that all of us want our school district to be exceptional for every kid. We are each pushing for our schools to be among the best in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. Our differences of opinion lie in how we go about achieving our goals for our children and their hopes and expectations. We owe it to our kids to be civil with each other to strengthen their opportunities. To that end, we encourage each of you to learn about the candidates and engage respectfully with each other by avoiding insults, name calling, and accusations.

→ Open enrollment. Shortly after, another parent spoke out against a policy change discussed previously that would have sent more students to East High School. I think her argument had some conceptual misunderstandings about what was being proposed and how the funding for open enrollment students worked, but she also added that she was worried that because almost all the board members lived on the east side of the city that this “makes the west side problems a bit more peripheral to you, and I would like to see more representation of the west side.”

Board member Leigh Anne Fraley, somewhat exasperated, said, “my responsibility when I sit in this seat is for every single student. I don't care where they live” and “the inference that has been made again and again about who sits on this board and who they care about is wildly offensive to me, and I just, I'm tired of it.”

At this point, Mike Meier, the lone board member residing on the west side asked to speak, but was rebuffed by board president Eric Jessup-Anger who said he wanted to move on.

Mr. Meier, responds somewhat theatrically with “Wow…wow,” and then throws up his arms and leans back in his seat. “The West side board member can't speak. You just proved their point.”

There are murmurs of agitation from the gathered crowd.

Ms. Fraley tells Mr. Jessup-Anger that he should probably let Mr. Meier say something.

However, board Member Dr. Jenny Hoag is damn tired of Mr. Meier’s histrionics. “Again, Mr. Meier, you accuse this board of things—” but Mr. Jessup-Anger tells her to stand down. “It's so inappropriate,” she adds before lapsing into silence. Mr. Jessup-Anger then makes a statement about open enrollment, neighborhood schools, and state funding for public education.

After he’s finished, he gives Mr. Meier the floor, and Mr. Meier says something pretty anodyne and unhistrionic about how he’s served on the board for 18 years and has “never seen a board member vote in their child's interests as opposed to the community interests.” He also mentions, though, that despite everyone’s best efforts to be impartial, hearing people on the board or in the community with different perspectives is useful.

Everyone settles down and the next five hours are pretty milquetoast.

→ Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Every other year, middle- and high-school students complete the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey. It asks lots of questions about smoking, vaping, suicide, sex, drugs, alcohol, depression, friends, bullying, etc. Americans, including district administrators and school board members, are pretty worried about the kids these days, so everyone was curious what the school district’s results were.

Their presentation of the most recent 2021 results included a number of tables, but I’ll just include two on mental health and perceptions of school safety. Red highlighting indicates a trend that has gotten worse since 2019 and green highlights trends that have shown improvement since 2019.

I’ll also include a graph I made over the summer on trends between 1993 and 2019 among Wisconsin high schoolers that either considered, made plans, attempted suicide, or attempted suicide and needed medical intervention. I’m still having a hard time reconciling these long term trends which are seemingly either constant or declining with the narrative that mental health for all students has gotten much, much worse. I am not saying we should ignore the narrative that everything is getting much, much worse or that there aren’t other statistics that support it (like the above), but it’s somewhat puzzling and worth looking into more deeply.

Questions from board members (answers or evasions in parentheses) included:

• [Video] How will you continue to track these problems in years that students don’t take the YRBS? (We formed a committee and hope they’ll have some ideas by the end of the year.)

• [Video] How can we catch some of these problems before they turn into fights and violence? Are we developing a screener? (Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. We have “so much foundational work” that “jumping to screening would be premature.”)

• [Video] Okay, so when will we have the screener? (Maybe in a year)

• [Video] The salaries for many of these new mental health positions are funded with temporary pandemic relief funds. How will we continue to pay for it once those expire in 2024? (We totally agree that we should figure this out.)

• [Video] It seems like students are engaging in fewer fights in school, fewer students think violence is a problem in school, and bullying numbers are down. Yet, the percent that feel safe at school continues to decline. What’s going on? (Social media? Maybe? It would be nice if students stopped recording these fights and putting them all over the internet.)

• [Video] These kids with behavioral referrals are telling us they don’t have a sense of belonging. How do we make them feel like they belong? (We formed some mentorship programs, and we have DEIA advocates.)

• [Video] Not really a question, but one board member suggested that administrators should develop some kind of decision point where they decide some of these ideas aren’t working and try something else, because we also have a moral responsibility to keep victims safe and continuing with the same ineffective programs erodes trust. “It doesn't take much time to cause people to lose confidence in what we're doing.” (The Superintendent, Dr. Demond Means, responded by saying that state law gives teachers the ability to remove any student from class if they’re deemed to be disruptive. However, several hours later at the end of the meeting a teacher stood up and said that yes, we can remove them, but when they come back five minutes later from the office with no consequences then it’s not particularly helpful.)

→ District disciplinary data. Administrators also presented a review of disciplinary data from the first half of the school year. They included statistics and demographic breakdowns on office referrals, suspensions, administrative hearings, and a few other things, some of which I’ve included below.

I think administrative hearings are some kind of review board that meets when you do something really bad and they need to do decide whether they want to expel you or do something else. Manifestation determination (MD) meetings are similar but for students with disabilities.

Data from previous years. Compared to the last 5-7 years, it doesn’t seem like 2022-23 is particularly unusual. Was everyone this upset in 2018?

There were a few other interesting statistics including:

• 286 students (4%) had 2-5 office referrals

• 68 students (1%) had 6+ office referrals

• 41 students (0.60%) had 2+ suspensions

Something that wasn’t provided and that nobody asked about was whether things like office referrals, suspensions, or administrative hearings have been going up or down since the beginning of the year. It would have been nice to see a month-by-month timeline.

Questions and comments from board members included:

• What happens when a kid is just repeatedly disrespectful and non-compliant? (I couldn’t really parse the answer, but it included terms like “behavior intervention training”, “special ed intersections”, “a continuum of options”, tying things back to “strategic plan components”, and a “framework for positive behavioral intervention and supports that integrates trauma-informed practices.”)

• Is the “alternative programming” for students that misbehave therapeutic or punitive? (Oh, definitely therapeutic. It’s “a temporary place in space to rehabilitate, to gain control,” and “to get supports and services.”)

• Two board members called the high rates of office referrals and suspensions among special education students and Black students “alarming.” One said that “research tells us that for the same events a White student gets a less punitive response than their Black peer and I think we're seeing it with these numbers” and that “I've been in the classroom in Wauwatosa—mostly in elementary—and I've talked to teachers, and I don't think that they would agree that their Black students are the ones that are are exhibiting more behavior problems than the White students.” She added that, “I'm gravely concerned about this and I want to know how we’re going to address it.” (Director of Student Success Emily O’Connor said that they’re looking at implementing more culturally responsive teaching and “taking that more restorative approach” by “building those relationships and teaching as opposed to that disciplinary measure and removal” and that she “appreciated that you highlighted all of the ways in which disproportionality is so complex”)

At this point, president Eric Jessup-Anger says the board needs to move on to other items on the agenda, but board member Sharon Muehlfeld asks “for a few more minutes, because I think we haven't really gotten our questions answered this evening and this is a big topic for us.”

She says, “we have mob fighting” and “we have high school kids who don't want to go into the bathroom because stuff happens in there.” She continues, “It's unsafe. So I mean what is it that's being done and has it been dealt with? Because we still keep seeing videos posted. Can we have an answer to that?”

Chief of Student and Family Supports Luke Pinion said that he would refer her to “the communication from two weeks ago that really articulated a lot of pieces of what we're trying to do to get ahead of this at the classroom level [and] the district level.”

Ms. Muehlfeld: “So we know why mob fighting happens or we don't? And we are getting reports soon enough so we can stop it before it becomes mob fighting and video postings to TikTok that have a ripple effect for like six months?”

Mr. Pinion: “What's the question?"

Ms. Muehlfeld: "People staging fights to post on social media which has an adverse ripple effect […] for months and months afterwards—have we figured out why this is happening?”

Mr. Pinion: “I mean every fight—I'm in these hearings, I hear the reasoning behind them, they're all coming from different areas. But it is a lot of peer conflict that they're not resolving in healthy ways.”

And so on.

I actually thought the most interesting thing was not the disproportionality in discipline rates between Black and White students but the lack of disproportionality between male and female students for some of the most severe offenses. Over half of the most violent and extreme fighting was between girls. The only two students expelled were girls. I feel like the administrators and board members were insufficiently curious about this.

Across all societies and all of history, men commit violence at vastly higher rates than women and yet 62% of the district’s administrative hearings (almost all for fighting) involve females. I feel like this suggests something particularly unique about the social dynamic of female students that is worth trying to understand. Social media, as some mentioned, is probably a large factor not just in documenting these fights but in causing them. Girls are aggressive in different ways and for different reasons than men (This article is a good summary. This book is also good.) and it suggests that you probably have two distinct problems—one involving general classroom disruption and disrespect that (maybe?) involves mostly boys and another involving some kind of toxic social dynamic of bullying and ostracism among a small group of girls—that would be more effectively handled with different types of interventions.

→ Superintendent Means presented the calendar for next school year. School will begin on September 5. There will be a single or half-day orientation (referred to as a “Strong Start” program) for incoming 6th and 9th grade students. There had been previous discussion about beginning school a week earlier and having a multi-day Strong Start period for all students but this was scrapped after parents complained. Several members of the board expressed their disappointment that this happened and asked the Superintendent to track the effectiveness of the abbreviated program.

→ Chief of Talent Sarah Zelazoski presented a proposal to increase compensation for support staff. While the teaching staff struggles with lower retention (83%) and 2.3% of their positions remain unfilled, the problem is worse for support staff (13% of positions unfilled) and educational assistants (16% of positions unfilled). Many positions remain open because of inadequate pay.

The proposed raises are intended to get support staff with several years of experience to the top quartile of the Milwaukee County wage distribution and will range between 2% and 10%. The total cost will be $385,000 per year.

Ms. Hoag asked how sustainable it was, and Superintendent Means replied that the state has not provided school districts with a CPI increase since 2009. “We can sustain it if the legislature lives up to its requirements of providing adequate funding.”

Mr. Phillips asked how other districts manage to pay so much more. “There are communities who have chosen to utilize either operating referendums or they've utilized—and I think this district has done this—have used facility referendums.”

Ms. Zelazoski also requested an additional $185,000 (in addition to previously granted allocations of $112,000 and $1.1 million earlier in the year) to “improve the consistency and continuity of teacher compensation” and make salaries more competitive with surrounding districts as well as one-time retention bonus payments totaling $215,000 for teachers and support staff “whose salaries increased by less than 4.7 percent for the 2022-23 school year.”

At this point there is a short back and forth between Ms. Willis and Mr. Means after Ms. Willis says she wants to do more to increase teacher salaries. Mr. Means responds that the stagnant funding from the state legislature will make that difficult. Ms. Willis says maybe we need to look at healthcare and “leverage it in a different way.” Mr. Means says whoa, whoa, whoa, we have retention problems but the teachers that do stay, stay because the benefits are so good. Ms. Willis says, no, no, no, I don't mean change the benefits, just rethink them. Mr. Means says any teachers listening to this will think those words mean the same thing.

Ms. Willis says, “We don't have educators entering into the pipeline. We're losing them at a rate unlike any other, right? And I don't know if that means—I'm not a CFO—but does that mean short-term borrowing? I mean, I just feel like there has to be creative solutions.”

I see Mr. Meier’s head pop up from his laptop—he’s previously spoken eloquently of the evils of short-term borrowing—but before he can speak, Mr. Jessup-Anger tells everyone they’re getting way off-topic, and the board moves on to their next agenda item.

→ Keith Brightman, Chief Financial Officer for the school district, gave a short presentation on the district’s budget planning process. Some highlights:

• Wauwatosa school district is one of only eleven districts in Wisconsin with a bond rating of Aa1 or higher.

• The district’s number one legislative priority is to establish “a predictable and sustainable K-12 funding model” because otherwise an operating referendum is the only way for the local board to keep pace with the rising costs of education.

• He emphasized a pro‐active approach to budgeting, using the strategic plan to drive budgetary decisions and focus on what he called the “A-ROI”—or academic return on investment. It wasn’t clear how A-ROI gets measured.

• Mr. Brightman addressed the districts $1.6 million dollar budget deficit: “I get some questions, ‘Why did we budget to a deficit for the current year?’ That's because that 1.6 million dollars is one-time revenue” that was rolled over from the previous year. Don’t worry, it all works out.

→ Returning the Wauwatosa East High School tower to its former glory. A very old resident of Wauwatosa wants to donate the one million dollars it will cost to replace the Wauwatosa East Tower. The board said that would be great but they need to do a feasibility study first.

Currently: No Tower.

Previously: With tower.

Have a great weekend.