‘The devil’s in the details’:
Parents request greater communication from school districts in Greenwood-Loyal collaboration effort
The Greenwood and Loyal school districts have spent the last school year making a concerted effort to share resources with each other. As they continue down the path of collaboration, they took some time last week to receive feedback from the public through listening sessions held in Greenwood on June 14 and Loyal on June 19, with both school boards present at each meeting.
Overall, community members were very much in support of increased collaboration between the districts; however, they saw some areas for improvement. Some of the common themes that came up in both sessions were the need for more communication and transparency from both school districts. Community members also urged the school districts to carefully think through the details and logistics of cooperative agreements for things like sports, to avoid rushing into something without being prepared. The sessions also allowed for some reconciliation between the boards and the community members who had previously expressed feeling left out of the collaboration proceedings. Several members of the public said a listening session was a step in the right direction.
“Thanks for the opportunity of a listening session,” said Curtiss Lindner, a parent from the Loyal School District who traveled to the Greenwood session. “This was needed and I hope we continue to have these discussions in the future… There was a perception of dishonesty with the Loyal and Greenwood school districts and a forum is a great step in the right direction to address groups and provide communication. This is an opportunity to truly listen and understand what the citizens want to relate to the board.”
Context While the board members were unable to speak on matters brought up by the public during the sessions, they could ask clarifying questions. Greenwood Superintendent Joe Green and Loyal Superintendent Chris Lindner also gave a brief overview of the collaboration plan as each meeting began.
“Some of the things we have prepared for the coming school year are that we have aligned the calendars together,” said Chris Lindner. “We will be starting and ending at around the same time. The bell schedule is pretty much the same with five-period days and trimesters. We’ve done some other sharing of things in the past too that will continue, sharing students, classes, transportation company, professional development days, athletics and summer recreation. We’re working on adding high school academics, advanced science, tech. ed. and college English as well as band and choir, drama, forensics, field trips and some assemblies and school presentations.”
Please see Collaboration, page 10 Collaboration
j from p. 1 On the athletics front, the schools are co-oped for softball, cross country, middle school and JV baseball, and middle school football, and will be co-oped for high school football in 2024. They are not yet co-oped for girls and boys basketball, volleyball, track and field, or varsity baseball. The boards have floated the idea of co-opingfor all athletics by fall 2024.
Greenwood listening session
There were a few common subjects brought up by citizens at the Greenwood meeting. Making sure details about a collaboration plan were ironed out before being implemented, questions on how to improve student education and even recommendations for a total consolidation of the districts were some of the most common topics.
A few members of the public posed questions concerning details they wanted the board to consider.
“Co-curricular classes. Classes will be switching to five-period blocks and trimesters. What will that look like?” asked Mary Denk, a Greenwood parent. “Is this at the high school level or elementary too? How are the kids being transported? Are there liability concerns? For student handbooks, will they be the same for both districts? Will the consequences for breaking the rules be the same? If a kid gets in trouble while he’s having classes in one district when he goes to school at the other district, what happens? The rules need to be consistent... We need to keep an open mind on our concerns. We all want the same things.”
“One of the things I appreciated after moving here four years ago was how many students you have involved in multiple co-curricular activities,” said Rev. Elizabeth Bier of ONE in Christ Church in Greenwood. “I really want to keep that level of excellence strong. What I worry about though is that with the time it takes to travel between districts for things, that will take away the time students use to do these multiple activities. On Wednesdays, practices for sports run until 5:30 to 6 p.m.; have you considered the extra travel time that they will have to have in order to make sure they get to the places they need to on time?”
“I’m all for collaboration,” added Jo Elmer, the director for Greenwood’s one-act plays. “Competition makes excellence. You don’t get a part (in a play); you have to earn it. On the timeline of this plan, we shouldn’t be rushing into this. We need to get the details worked out because we don’t want to fail at all this. I want us to collaborate together with well thought-out details and plans so this works.”
A few others who spoke at the listening session brought up other things they wanted to see come from the school collaboration. Educational priorities were very important, with parents asking for strong curriculums to teach the students life skills, communication with staff and a way to try to retain staff for the long term.
“Education is the most important thing,” said Nick Stieglitz. “I feel like our schools have become a stepping stone for new teachers. When I was in school, teachers stayed. It would be nice to not have a revolving door all the time. Schools need to also do a better job to get kids ready for real life. I hear about kids that leave high school who can’t make change when someone pays them with cash. They don’t know how to tell time on a regular watch. They can’t read cursive and don't know how to balance a checkbook or write a check. Stuff like that. All these things, high school kids should know how to do. I don’t want kids out there who don’t know how to tell time or make change. They should be able to do this stuff. You’re doing a good job of getting them ready for college, but not everyone is cut out for college. You need to get those students ready for life too.”
While everyone who spoke at the Greenwood meeting spoke in favor of the school collaboration, there were a few parents who said they wanted to take it a step further and look at consolidating the two districts.
“Cooperation is great,” said Curtiss Lindner. “We’re glad to see it happening, but is this the right route? What if it fails? We should start a feasibility study for a co-op, not just collaboration. Loyal’s referendum is going to be up again in five years. One of these times, a referendum will not be able to pass. What will we do then? We need to either consider consolidation or stick to a cooperative effort that we’re doing. We have to start this now. If you start too late, you shoot yourselves in the foot and it will be an uphill battle.”
“Sixty years ago we were trying for consolidation,” added Jana Schmitz. “In 2007 there was a vote on consolidation. I voted yes. It needed to be done. Times have been tough since then and that’s why we’re at where we are at right now. This should have been done years ago.”
Loyal listening session
About 40 members of the public attended the Loyal listening session Monday After sharing about collaboration steps taken already, the district administrators opened the floor for whoever would like to speak.
Kim Bremmer, a former Loyal School Board member and parent, started things off.
Bremmer participated in five joint school board meetings over the past school year.
“The committee began as a working group focused on increasing opportunities for all kids in our districts through the sharing of resources. In the first meeting, we identified the areas of greatest need being science and math. We talked about accomplishing the following over this past year: grade-level collaboration; content area collaboration, particularly a science mentor; field trips; summer school with the potential of a STEM Camp Invention; trap league; other co-curricular activities; as well as sharing CESA resources to help our districts save money. I’m probably biased, but I think great ideas came out of our meetings.
“But with any new program, the challenge is in preventing mission creep. I’m not sure how many of those initial goals were actually reached. We need to stay focused on increasing meaningful opportunities for our kids where it’s most needed and makes the most sense.
“My concern is, moving forward, do we have the right people in place to work out the details to make our collaboration successful? An idea is one thing; the actual execution and the real work involved to see it through is another. What’s the expression—the devil’s in the details. I don’t want to see us fail because we had a really great plan, but not a well-thought out plan.”
She said it was imperative that both boards seek input from teachers and coaches, the people who will actually implement the changes.
“The elephant in the room is a growing lack of trust between the admin team and staff. And how can we build a collaborative culture with a lack of trust in leadership? How can our districts better retain our staff?”
The Loyal School District has seen about a third of its faculty and support staff leave over the past three years, and not all due to retirements, said Bremmer. She said the way to retain families was to ensure the school districts had high-quality teachers to put in front of students. She ended by saying she thought the collaboration could be successful while still maintaining the identity of both districts, but she hoped the school boards and administration could 'better communicate the plan, the benefits and the why moving forward.”
Greenwood School Board member Eliza Ruzic asked Bremmer if she had suggestions on how the boards could better communicate going forward. Bremmer suggested expanding the joint committee to possibly include community members, parents or coaches. She also said it was too easy for school boards to abuse Wis. Stat. 19.85 by talking about things in closed session that should really be discussed in open session. She encouraged the boards to talk in open session as much as possible.
Former Greenwood School Board member Mark Shain also spoke. He said it was important to maintain the “structural integrity of secondary education” and encouraged the boards to keep pressing forward with their collaboration efforts. He also encouraged the school districts to look to model school districts in southwestern Wisconsin as examples of how to collaborate successfully Becky Kohnert, Greenwood Elementary School receptionist and parent, said she graduated from Whitehall High School and had seen how it collaborated successfully with the Blair School District, especially for technical education and automotive programs, which had been a great benefit to the students. She said her son played middle school baseball this year for the first time in a Greenwood-Loyal co-op.
“It was fantastic. They all saw playing time and it was competitive,” she said.
She also praised the Greenwood-Loyal cross country co-op.
William Bratcher was next to speak. He is the parent of Loyal students and his wife works at Loyal. He wanted to address the question of how to better communicate that was brought up earlier in the meeting.
“Communication in general starts with listening, so congratulations, you’ve completed the first step. When you receive negative feedback, the immediate reaction
Please see Collaboration, page 18 Collaboration,
from p. 10
might be to try and shoot back an answer, but it’s better to just receive it and accept it as an opportunity for growth and to make things better… If there is a concern, you need to work with those people to talk it out and find a solution, and then after you implement a solution, have another meeting to come back and say, ‘Here’s what we did.’” He said that although he was not opposed to co-ops, he would have liked to have had communication before the decision was made.
“I was kind of blind-sided with the idea that baseball might be co-oped with JV and varsity. I know we receive communication all the time as parents on the Remind app about ‘this game is canceled’ or ‘this practice is moved.’ I would encourage the boards to throw something on the Remind app to say, ‘Hey, here’s what we’re thinking about the co-op. This is a meeting you can attend to provide feedback.’ I’m not sure any feedback was sought for that. And we have to remember we’re all on the same team; we all want the best opportunities for our kids.”
Loyal School Board member Dennis Roehl asked Bratcher what he felt the best method of communication was — the Remind app, social media, the newspaper, school website or some other method. Bratcher said he preferred the Remind app, but he turned around and asked the parents gathered what communication method they preferred. The resounding answer was “all of the above.”
“You can’t put out too much information,” said Greenwood parent Thomas Neal.
Aaron Greisen was next to speak. He is a Greenwood High School alumnus, the county veterans service officer and parent to a young child in the Greenwood School District. He has also helped with junior high football at Greenwood. He thanked the joint board for the chance to speak and started by saying he felt collaboration was what was best for the kids.
He acknowledged there were “pockets of resistance,” namely when it came to co-oping for sports, with people’s biggest concern being that the combined enrollment for sports would cause the program to go up a division, and make it harder to advance to state. However, he felt that should not be a deciding factor in whether to co-op or not, and that increased competition was a healthy thing.
“The best thing is not a state championship, but the kid walking across that stage and they’re ready for what life brings them. Sometimes the lessons are: you’re not going to be a starter, you’re not going to play till you’re a senior, you’re not going to make it to state. Those are important concepts and the principles our kids need to notice. We’re preparing them for the game of life at the end of the day,” he said.
He also spoke about the process for choosing the mascot for Loyal and Greenwood’s combined teams.
“I found out it was going to be the Wolves and was reassured by multiple people that ‘the kids chose it, the kids chose it.’ I said OK, that’s fair. If the kids chose it, I’m all in. Until I saw the results of what the kids actually submitted,” he said.
He said he was happy the school administration opened up the mascot discussion to the students, although he didn’t know that school email was the best method of soliciting responses from the students, because not all students check their school email frequently and several students he talked to weren’t aware the schools were looking for mascot submissions.
“I still was just kind of indifferent until I saw the results, and the number-one choice was the Butter Makers,” said Greisen.
He got a copy of the list of mascot ideas that were submitted from both schools’ students. There were 46 responses. After eliminating inappropriate answers such as keeping Greyhounds or Indians, Butter Makers was the most popular response. Five students had Butter Makers. Four other responses were agriculture-related: the Grasslanders, Bovines, Bulls and a Corn Cob.
“The kids said, who are we in Greenwood and Loyal? We’re agriculture-type people and that’s what came up. And it was totally disregarded,” said Greisen.
Administration had previously said the “common themes” that emerged from the survey were the Wolves, Patriots and Eagles. There were four Wolves/Coyotes responses. Only one response mentioned Patriots by name, with the closest other responses being Gladiators and Knights. Likewise, only one response mentioned Eagles, with the other closest responses being Firebirds and Hawks.
“When the students voted, you have Patriots and Eagles, which are both NFL teams, and we’re all Packer fans so of course we’re not going to vote for them, so Wolves was the default… That’s not important because we came up with the Wolves; what’s important is it instilled an early sense of mistrust in us as citizens… You gave it to the kids to decide, and they did, and then you just force-fed them something that you wanted. To get back to Kim’s point, she said the devil’s in the details. How we do the small things is how we do the big things. Maybe a mascot is a small thing. But I feel like it was handled kind of poorly. And now for the people who are dissenting, who do not want collaboration, we’re giving them ammunition as to why it shouldn’t happen,” he said.
Greisen finished by saying he would support the Wolves mascot, but felt both schools needed to do a better job of showing transparency and having open, honest communication.
Grace Genteman, a Greenwood alumnus and a Loyal parent who also taught music at Loyal this past year, had a brief comment.
“All I have to say is with what’s been going on the past few years, is we all — whether the school board or the communities — we have to show kindness. And that’s been missing. So that would be my request through all this, is let’s have some kindness,” said Genteman. Denk also attended this meeting and spoke. “I do believe most members of both communities want collaboration. However, the processes taken up to this point have been less than desirable. The lack of transparency has also been less than desirable,” she said. “If there’s one thing to learn, it’s that you cannot be too transparent or too honest with us. The public deserves to be informed. We want to listen, learn and help where we can. You guys are lucky to have very passionate community members, so take advantage of that.”
She said she would like to see a question-and-answer meeting in which the school boards could have open dialogue with community members, but if there was no way to do that, she thought it would be a good idea to mail a joint newsletter to residents of both districts.
“School board members specifically, we voted for you and we trust you for building the best future for our kids’ education — we appreciate everything you do… It is a lot to carry, but don’t be afraid to reach out to community members and school staff to see what their thoughts are. Ask what we can do to help. Ask what their needs are.”
She said she hoped the school board members viewed collaboration as a great opportunity to work together with the community to build the best educational system for the kids.
The superintendents said they would take the comments made into account, and they wanted to keep the conversation going. In the future, said Green, the districts plan to hold more community forums to discuss collaboration but that the public didn’t need to wait for those meetings to occur to express their thoughts.
“Tonight we listened to anyone who wanted to share with us, but we want you to know that these doors are always open,” said Green at the close of the Greenwood session. “Mr. Lindner and I want to hear from you; that is the only way we will be able to grow and get better. We want to have more community forums, but don’t wait for that. We work all year and we’re here and want to hear from you. It will be taken to our committees. Share your ideas. It’s important to get that feedback. We are trying to do the best we can for our kids. We need that feedback.”
The Greenwood and Loyal school boards plan to have a joint meeting this Thursday, June 22, at Loyal High School at noon. The boards will have their individual meetings next Wednesday, June 28, at 7 p.m. at their respective schools. Members of the public are welcome to speak during the public comment portion of the meetings.
CHEYENNE THOMAS/STAFF PHOTO
