Superintendent pick looms over PW-S board race

A four-person race for two seats on the Port Washington-Saukville School Board that was born out of controversy over teaching during the pandemic and comes as the board works to hire the district’s next superintendent will be decided by voters next week.

Incumbents Brenda Fritsch, who serves as School Board president, and Aaron Paulin face challengers Robert Brooks and Danielle Mayer in the April 6 general election.

A fifth candidate, Rob Clearwater, was eliminated from the race in the Feb. 16 primary election.

The School Board in the near future will face decisions about how to help students recover academically and emotionally from the pandemic, how the district should foster diversity and how it can better communicate with parents and other district residents.

But the immediate priority for the board is selecting a successor to Supt. Michael Weber, who after 21 years at the helm of the district will retire on June 30.

As board members, Fritsch and Paulin have helped decide on a process that has entailed the hiring of School Exec Connect to conduct the search as well as an ongoing online survey and focus groups to solicit public input on the hiring of the top administrator. The process, Fritsch and Paulin said, is designed not only to find the most qualified candidate but the one who is best suited to the district.

Mayer and Brooks said the board is taking the right approach.

“I think it’s awesome the board hired a professional firm to conduct the search,” Mayer, 23, a Port Washington High School graduate and sixth-grade teacher in the Cedarburg School District, said in an interview. “I also like that they reached out to the community, which is a great way to gauge what the public wants to see in the next superintendent.”

Brooks, 31, a Port High graduate who is a project engineer and construction manager for Mortenson, said, “I appreciate that the board is reaching out to the community and involving parents and other stakeholders in a decision we must get right.”

Mayer said the district’s top administrator should be an experienced superintendent with strong leadership skills.

“The superintendent should also be someone who is going to be very involved in the community and takes the time to understand the history and goals of the community,” she said.

Fritsch, 52, a residential architect seeking her fourth term on the board, said the next superintendent should be open-minded.

“To me, that means an educational leader who understands what each school in the district needs, what each child in the district needs and what each employee in the district needs,” Fritsch said. “It also means someone who gets to know the community, not just parents but all residents.”

Paulin, 42, a social studies teacher at West Bend West High School seeking his second term on the board, said the district’s leader should have strong relationship-building skills, preferably have experience as a superintendent in a relatively small school district and be willing to learn about the Port Washington-Saukville District before implementing changes.

“I think we have a lot of good things in place in this district, so for at least the first year the next superintendent needs to observe and learn, then take a look at what we can improve,” he said.

Brooks said the next superintendent should actively work to involve parents and other community members in the district’s decision making process.

“We need someone who will reach out to the community, accept the feedback and actually take it seriously when making the changes that are needed in this district,” he said. 

That, Brooks said, will go a long way toward repairing the relationship between the district and parents that was “fractured” by the decision to educate students with a mix of online and in-person instruction for the first semester of this school year. Frustration with that system boiled over in January when more than 100 parents attended a School Board meeting and demanded a return to full-time, in-person instruction, which happened at the start of the second semester.

All challengers in the race have said the district’s approach to teaching during the pandemic factored into their decisions to run, but Brooks has been the most critical of the hybrid system, calling it a “debacle” that illustrates a need for changes.

Candidates agree that one of the lessons learned is that the district needs to better communicate with parents and other residents of the district, and among the ways it should do that is by livestreaming and posting online recordings of School Board meetings, improving its newsletters, using social media to quickly and effectively disseminate news and marketing its achievements.

They also agree that one of the district’s most pressing challenges is helping students who have struggled academically and emotionally during the pandemic.

“The biggest things we need to focus on are our kids,” Fritsch said during an online forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Ozaukee County and the Niederkorn Library in Port Washington. “We need to find out who is struggling and where they are struggling. Then we can use a team effort to help those children improve.”

That team effort, she said, should include parents.

“We also need to make sure we know where students are at mental health-wise, where they are socially,” Fritsch said.

Paulin and Mayer agreed that the district needs to provide support for students who have suffered emotionally during the pandemic.

“One of the biggest things coming out of the whole Covid situation is looking at students’ mental, emotional and social well-being,” Mayer said.

Suggesting Port-Saukville students fell further behind academically than their peers in other districts during the pandemic, Brooks said, “We need to get these kids caught up educationally and socially to where they can compete with the surrounding districts and students across the country who may have been in districts that were going full time or may have had better systems in place to cover the curriculum.”

And as the district emerges from the pandemic, it cannot squander the public attention it has attracted, he said.

“The community is highly engaged at this point,” Brooks said. “I do not want to see us just turn our back on that. We need to turn around with open arms and allow them to be involved in key decisions.”

Among the other challenges facing the School Board is fostering diversity and ensuring that all students are well served by the district regardless of race or ethnicity or whether they identify as LGBTQ, candidates said.

“There needs to be awareness and support for all these people who might identify with these groups,” Paulin said, adding that sensitivity training for staff members and students would help raise that awareness.

The curriculum, especially in areas such as social studies, he said, should be taught from the points of view of multiple groups, not just those in the majority.

Paulin also suggested collaborating with other school districts to promote diversity.

“I think it would be neat to partner with other school districts to see if we can work together to help each other with diversity since Port Washington is predominantly white,” he said. “I think that could be a neat opportunity and experience for a lot of students.”

Mayer said it is important that district employees are trained  to support and advocate for all students.

“Every student should embrace who they really are and feel they are welcomed and valued in their school community,” she said. 

One way to do that is to ensure the district has organizations and programs that support all students so they “can find a group they can relate to and feel supported and accepted by,” Mayer said. 

Fritsch also said that programs and organizations for all students are important, as are mental health resources and counseling.

“I think it’s also very important for us to take a look at evaluating our programs to make sure all students see role models for themselves in our district,” Fritsch said. She noted diversity benefits all students.

“We need to prepare our students for a diverse America when they leave Port Washington,” Fritsch said. “America looks very different than Port Washington.”

Referring to staff members, Brooks said, “Educating them on some of those groups that are out there and what issues they may encounter in our school system” is key.

Mayer, who has a degree in special education, said she was inspired to run for the board by her brother Sammy, who has Down syndrome.

“I want to give our special education community a strong voice as well as provide more programs and opportunities for the special education community,” she said. “I want to see a more inclusive environment. It’s so important that students are not isolated from their peers.”

Mayer said it is also her goal to strengthen communication between the district and community.

Brooks, who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said that after he completed eight years of military service, he and his wife could have decided to raise their family anywhere in the country but chose Port Washington in large part because of the school system.

He said the district’s flawed approach to education during the pandemic prompted his run for the board.

“For the last year plus, I’ve certainly been frustrated by things and thought I would take a more active role,” he said. “My two goals are to improve transparency and accountability.”

Fritsch said that after nine years on the board she considered stepping down at the end of her term later this month but decided there was more she wanted to accomplish in the district, especially in light of the challenges presented by the pandemic.

“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.”

She 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 member of the district’s safety and mental health teams, said that in addition to being focused on finding the right superintendent, he wants to make sure the district continues to expand the mental health services it provides for students.

“I think the district has done a great job sewing up the physical safety of students, but I think we need to start looking at what will help children with the emotional part,” he said. 

Paulin said he also wants to expand Advance Placement class offerings and ensure the ongoing effort to install an acoustic cloud system over the stage in the Port Washington High School Performing Arts Center is completed.

Paulin, Brooks and Fritsch all have children who attend district schools. Mayer said she is looking forward to the day she has children and they attend Port-Saukville schools. 

The 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 district residents. 

Board members serve three-year terms. 

The winners of next week’s election will be sworn in on April 26, Weber said.