This week's School Board and Government Affairs meetings
Parents complain about recent incidents at Whitman and Wauwatosa East schools. The city discusses its new strategic plan.
Wauwatosa School Board Meeting
→ Public Comment on Recent Events: Late last week, a student brought a gun to Wauwatosa West High School. Also last week at Whitman Middle School, a teacher was escorted off-campus after they had an inappropriate conversation with students about sex. The teacher previously had a felony conviction for resisting arrest “but was also found not to be legally responsible under Wis. Stats. 971.165 for committing the crime(s) because of the defendant's mental condition.”
This fact didn’t really make parents feel better. At this week’s school board meeting, parents, residents, and teachers spoke not only about these particular incidents but what they perceive to be the years-long decline in the quality of Wauwatosa schools citing fights and behavioral issues, a loss of academic rigor, increasing staff turnover, and a lack of transparency from school administrators.
One parent said the school is going down the drain. Another, that she’s considering moving. A third that given the number of scandals and outrageous incidents recently, he’s almost embarrassed to say he lives in Wauwatosa. While he was relieved by the school’s quick response, he worries that it’s mostly security theater: “You guys crank out these emails with a bunch of things you're going to do, but it isn't really addressing the issue. It's just a work around. It's just to look like you're trying something.”
A selection of comments, from parents and teachers:
1.
My youngest child graduated in 2015. Both of my children had great educations at Wauwatosa West and since then, I don’t know what’s going on. Hearing all these stories. I’m keeping myself involved as a taxpayer, because if our schools suck, then our community is basically going to go downhill. We are paying a lot in taxes to live here. And as a board, if you’re considering new leadership at your next meeting, I would strongly encourage you to look at who has been in the leadership positions for the last few years and led us down these paths—with the AVID scandal, [and] our enrollment is down over 300 students. We have brand new schools. Who’s going to fill them? So I would strongly encourage you to take a look at who is going to be the next board president and make a good decision.
2.
I am a 20-year veteran of the school district with a son who graduated in 2019, a senior at West, and an 8th-grader at Whitman, and like many of the parents here, I have the same concerns. My one question for the board is: what’s it gonna take? What’s it gonna take for you to make change? Does a teacher have to get shot dead like they did at West back in the 90s? What’s it gonna take? Can you please, please take action, because these events that have been happening are not acceptable. And you see the same faces here all the time. Mine being one of them. I’m sure you’re sick of seeing me. So if you don’t want to see me at these board meetings, do something. Act. We’re tired of being here all the time.
3.
This is not right. There is something seriously wrong, something seriously has to happen immediately. This can’t wait. This can’t be studied. I don’t know how we ended up in this social experiment that we’ve got, but it has to end. We’ve invested in the schools. My tax bills, everybody else who’s in this meeting—property tax bills have gone up markedly in the last 2-3 years just for the improvements. We’ve improved the schools, and I’m not sure where the problem is coming from, but I don’t think it’s the teachers. I think it’s what the teachers are working with. I don’t know if we’re importing the problem, but if we are importing the problem for funding purposes, we need to stop importing the problem.
Government Affairs Meeting
→ Strategic Planning Planning: The City will begin soliciting community and staff input for its next Strategic Plan, the document it uses to set priorities for the Common Council and guide its efforts over the next several years. The last Strategic Planning document for 2017-2019 (I do not know if there is one for 2019-2021. If there is I can’t find it) set broad goals covering transportation, safety, health, workforce development, infrastructure, and the city’s tax base with specific tasks and measurements of each. As Ald. Tilleson noted during the meeting :
The strategic plan is a profoundly important document [...] It is something that staff uses to guide the council's intention and the city's intention. And it's something that members of the common council reference frequently when we're deciding to vote on something.
The input into the strategic planning process has already begun and is intended to be completed prior to the city’s next budget cycle in the fall. It consists of:
A survey for staff members,
Interviews with elected leaders,
Review of city documents,
A June workshop for elected officials and city staff, and
Multiple avenues for citizen input, including:
An in-person community feedback session on Saturday, May 14 from 10-11:30 am in the Lower Civic Center,
A virtual community feedback session on Wednesday, May 25, 6:30-8 pm via Zoom, and
An ongoing opportunity to provide feedback online via survey (this will be up next week)
The consultants will then aggregate this input and present a summary of these activities during the Tuesday, September 6 Committee of the Whole meeting. The Deputy City Administrator said she hopes that the Common Council can then approve the plan by Tuesday, September 20.
→ City Administrator’s Quarterly Update: In an effort to keep the Common Council abreast of various issues that might not otherwise come up on a regular meeting agenda, City Administrator Jim Archambo gave a brief update on multiple efforts that his staff had been focused on during the first several months of 2022:
The City continues to upgrade and train staff on new resource planning software it has invested in. If you noticed a change in how you access and pay for your utility bills online over the last year, that is one of the improvements the city has made to streamline government and make it more responsive to residents. While it has mostly completed upgrades to its financial and utility billing systems, it has more improvements scheduled to ease licensing and development plan submission, allow citizens to digitally file claims and reports, and make it easier to check the status of ongoing capital improvement projects in the city.
The ARPA plan funding approved several months ago is being distributed. Mr. Archambo mentioned specifically a digital advertising campaign to increase tourism and noted an increase in hotel reservations, thousands of additional subscriptions to the city’s digital mailing list, and a positive response to participants in the Tosa Restaurant Week.
Of the major construction projects scheduled for this year, contracts have been awarded for the reconstruction of 68th Street, the city garage floor drain reconstruction, sanitary sewer improvements, the North Avenue water main and local road work, North Avenue from 117th to Mayfair Road, and roof replacements at the Police Department and Fire Station 52. None of the work has been completed yet.
A Request for Proposal will go out this fall to elicit bids from consultants to help the city revise its Comprehensive Plan. This project is scheduled to begin in February 2023.
→ Legislative Map Updates: Last minute changes to state legislative maps following the 2020 Census have forced city officials to hastily redraw ward boundaries. On March 23, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected legislative redistricting maps submitted by Gov. Tony Evers that had been approved by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Although this decision did not affect the local April 5 elections several weeks ago, the Wisconsin-Supreme-Court-approved maps did ignore existing ward boundaries in Wauwatosa. City Attorney Alan Kesner gave a short update on the situation and told the Government Affairs committee that state law requires that wards match state legislative boundaries by May 10. Because legislative district lines split some of the city’s wards, the solution was to create new wards like Ward 24A and 24B (visible in the top center of the picture below) that are relevant for state elections but have no impact on local representation or elections. It looks kind of wacky.
