Back-to-school plan fuels crowded board race

Five candidates running for two seats on the Port Washington-Saukville School Board will square off in a Tuesday, Feb. 16, primary election fueled by controversy over the district’s approach to educating students during the pandemic.

Challengers Robert Brooks, Rob Clearwater and Danielle Mayer, who are all making their first bids for elected office, face incumbents Brenda Fritsch, who is seeking her fourth term on the board and serves as board president, and Aaron Paulin, who is running for a second term.

The candidate who receives the fewest votes in next week’s primary will be eliminated from the race. The other four will advance to the April 6 general election.

The unusually crowded race was born out of frustration with the district’s hybrid approach to instruction, which boiled over at a Jan. 4 School Board meeting in the Port Washington High School Performing Arts Center attended by more than 100 parents who described how their children were struggling because they were in classrooms only two days a week and learning online the rest of the time.

The parents, who called for a return to full-time, in-person teaching, left that meeting angry that most board members did not articulate where they stood on the issue. But at an equally well-attended meeting the following week, they cheered when the board decided to resume full-time classroom instruction at the beginning of the second semester on Jan 25. 

Although that controversy is resolved, several candidates say the handling of the issue damaged the relationship between parents and the district’s leadership and signals the need for change on the board.

“The reason I decided to run was the absolute debacle that the district’s hybrid approach to teaching was,” Brooks, 31, said, adding that his son, a sixth-grader at Thomas Jefferson Middle School who typically excels in school, struggled under the district’s hybrid approach. “The real problem was that there was never a plan to move between phases” and return to full-time, in-person instruction.

That, Brooks said, is a symptom of the board’s unwillingness to challenge the administration.

“I don’t know that there are a lot of independent thinkers on the board,” he said. “They just kind of go with the flow and back the administration.

“I’m not afraid to be the dissenting vote. A little disagreement can go a long way.”

Mayer, 23, said she did not oppose the board’s decision to begin the school year with a mix of in-person and online learning, although she noted the district was an outlier.

“I don’t think it was initially a mistake, but I was a little concerned because the districts around us headed back to school full time,” 

Mayer, who is a sixth-grade teacher in the Cedarburg School District, said. She said that district, which began the school year with full-time classroom instruction, only had to close school and switch to online-only instruction for a week-and-a-half because of Covid-19.

The problems in the Port Washington-Saukville School District, Mayer said, were that officials were slow to transition to full-time, in-person instruction when it became clear the virus was not spreading unchecked through schools and that board members appeared to be oblivious to the concerns of parents and didn’t communicate with them.

“Really the biggest problem was communication,” she said. “When the community wanted to transition, the School Board and the administration were unaware of that.”

Clearwater, 49, said the district failed parents and students by not having a clear plan to return to full-time classroom instruction.

“I don’t believe the hybrid model was the wrong decision at the beginning of the school year when there was a lot of uncertainties, but there should have been a clear path (to full-time, in-person instruction) and there wasn’t,” he said.

Referring in particular to the Jan. 4 meeting during which board members were unable or unwilling to reach a consensus about returning to students to classrooms full time, Clearwater said, “It just seems like there’s too much talking at School Board meetings and not enough action — analysis paralysis at times.”

Paulin, 42, who was elected to the board in 2018, voted against the district’s hybrid teaching plan in July and said there was not much about it he liked. He was particularly concerned, he said, that the district did not embrace synchronous learning, a type of online teaching that allows students to participate in classroom instruction remotely.

“I didn’t like the plan from the get-go, and we should have transitioned to more in-person learning a lot sooner,” he said. 

Noting he questioned the effectiveness of the district’s hybrid instruction throughout the first semester, Paulin said he was frustrated by the answers he received. 

“In November, I had administrators tell me the plan was working and that it was successful,” he said. “Had they been more open to other ideas, I think we could have avoided all this division and frustration.

“I don’t think this whole issue was indicative of a problem with the board as much as it was of the district’s leadership being out of touch with the community and what it wanted.”

Fritsch, 52, who was first elected to the board in 2012, said the district did the right thing by starting the school year with hybrid instruction.

“It was a good balance between education and containing the spread of the virus,” she said. “Without a crystal ball, we thought it was the right way to go.”

In November, Fritsch said, Covid-19 cases were surging in Wisconsin and some area districts were being forced to close schools for periods of time, although the worst fears of the virus racing unchecked through schools had not been realized and she was contemplating a return to full-time, in-person instruction for the second semester.

“I was watching the cases closely and really just wanted to get through the spikes we were warned about after Thanksgiving and Christmas,” she said. “I was anticipating a return to full-time instruction in January.”

But before the board discussed a return to a normal schedule, parents demanded it while offering a bleak assessment of academic achievement and social development under the hybrid model.

“In hindsight,” Fritsch said, “I think the communication from the administration to the board and from the board to the community could have been better.”

While the challenges of educating students during a pandemic continue, the board is now also faced with hiring a superintendant to replace Michael Weber, who announced last week he will retire on June 30 after 21 years at the helm of the district.

Naming his successor appeared to be another controversy in the making, with questions about whether the board would pick an internal candidate or decide to search for someone outside the district, but the board diffused any controversy Monday when it decided to hire a consultant to conduct an external search.

The candidates generally agree that the new superintendent must be willing to be involved in the community, work to hire and retain the best educators, interact well with students and parents, communicate effectively with the School Board and continue to advance the district academically.

Brooks and Paulin said specifically that the new superintendent must be able to mend the damage done by the debate over how to educate students during the pandemic.

“This year has been pretty damaging to the relationship between parents, the School Board and administration,” Brooks said. “We need someone who is a healer and can repair the damage.”

Candidates also bring to the race a host of other priorities.

Fritsch said that after nine years on the board, she considered stepping down at the end of her term in April but decided there was more she wanted to accomplish in the district.

“This has been such an odd year that I want to make sure the district is OK educationally,” she said. “I want to make sure we wrap up the school year the best we can and start the next one the best we can.”

Fritsch, a residential architect who has three children, one who graduated from Port High and two who are currently students there, said she is pleased with the academic progress the district has made and the relationship the board and administrators have with staff members. 

“I’m proud of where we are academically, right there with our neighboring districts,” she said. “And I’m also very proud of our staff and how they have handled the pandemic. One of the things we did right was give our staff input and make them part of the process of planning for this school year.”

Paulin, a social studies teacher at West Bend West High School who has three children who attend schools in the district, said he wants to expand Advance Placement class offerings and ensure the ongoing effort to install an acoustic cloud system over the stage in the Performing Arts Center is completed, as well as continue the district’s focus on mental health and school safety.

He said he would continue to be an independent voice on the board.

“I don’t mind poking the bear,” he said. “I’m not afraid to say no or go against anyone, no matter what degrees they have.

“And I want to be part of the solution to mend and heal some of the division that has happened in our district.”

Mayer, a Port Washington High School graduate who majored in education and special education at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, said she was inspired by her younger brother Sam, who has Down syndrome, to pursue her longtime dream of serving on the School Board. 

“I think we can do a little better providing programs for students with special needs,” she said. 

Her priorities also include expanding tech-ed classes at the middle school and hiring and retaining high quality educators.

“I’m a former student of this district and I have a passion for this community,” she said. “These are the schools my children will attend some day.”

Clearwater, who attended Port High before earning his graduate equivalency degree and serving in the U.S. Army during Operation Desert Storm, said he is prepared to put in the work required to accomplish the board’s goals.

“I want to bring the board together in a way that we can communicate effectively and get things done,” said Clearwater, who is a maintenance and engineering manager for the Sherwin Williams Paint Co. and has two children who attend district schools. “I’m a roll-up-your-sleeves sort of guy.”

Brooks, a Port Washington High School graduate who earned a law degree with a systems engineering emphasis from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said he would be an independent voice for parents on the board.

“I would bring the perspective of a parent who has dealt with the failure of this year,” Brooks, who is a project engineer and construction manager for Mortenson and has two children, said. “I’m looking to be a voice for the once silent majority that became increasingly frustrated with maintaining the status quo and letting the administration run roughshod over the board.”

The five candidates are running for two seats representing the City of Port Washington on the School Board. Although members represent specific areas of the district, they are elected by all residents of the district.

School Board members serve three-year terms.