Attention: Greenwood and Loyal communities

Mary Denk

Greenwood

Transparency. What is transparency? Is it being open and honest about everything or is it selectively telling people what you want them to hear? Definition: the quality of being easy to perceive or detect.

Trust. What is trust? Definition: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

Where am I going with this? I recently attended a Greenwood School Board meeting on April 19. At said meeting, I addressed two subjects that are of sincere concern to myself, my family and, very importantly, my community. The first was classroom conduct and consequences. A subject which can be considered rather touchy. The second was the discussion of the co-op between Greenwood and Loyal communities. While both subjects were addressed briefly, I fear my concerns have fallen on deaf ears.

At this point, I believe it’s my duty as a concerned parent and citizen to reach out to other community members to get collaborative opinions regarding the process and result of how the co-op colors and mascot were created, as understanding how this process worked could shed light on other matters that come to fruition in the future.

At the school board meeting, I presented Mr. Joe Green, Greenwood administrator/ high school principal, with an open records request. I was informed that the Greenwood School District has a policy of submitting a formal request for records. Therefore, I presented my request to Mr. Green, asking for “emails and/or responses that exist for the correspondence/ survey sent to students in regards to the co-op sports mascot and colors” as well as the results of the survey.

After waiting a couple of weeks, I was told my request would be ready on May 3 and would cost $50. Let me reference Wisconsin State Statute 19.35 (3)(c): “Except as otherwise provided by law or as authorized to be prescribed by law, an authority may impose a fee upon a requester for locating a record, not exceeding the actual, necessary and direct cost of location, if the cost is $50 or more.” Although, I was hesitant to pay $50 for the request, my suspicions of the lack of transparency and honesty were realized.

As the request was presented, I received 12 sheets of paper, which included three school board agendas. The remaining eight pieces of paper are explained as follows: 1. An email was sent through Google Forms from Mr. Green to 2026@greenwood.k12.wi.us on Feb. 3 at 5:59 a.m. The email was directed to the Class of 2026 requesting recommendation for a shared mascot with the Loyal School District. The request for recommendation gave the students until Feb. 10 to respond.

2. A list of 48 suggested mascots were received. To be honest, some of the submissions were rather disturbing and should have thrown a red flag up to the administration that some of the kids were not taking the matter seriously. Frankly, it begs to question as to whether the students should even be voting on this matter. For reference, one submission was Clifford the Big Red Dog and a second was the Greenwood spear through the Greyhound. I know I don’t have to point out the inappropriateness of these submissions.

3. An email was sent through Google Forms from Mr. Green to 2027@greenwood. k12.wi.us on Feb. 16 at 6:36 a.m. The email was directed to the Class of 2027 requesting recommendations for a shared mascot with the Loyal School District. The email appears to point to the three most common themes from the previous survey. The request for recommendations gave the students until Feb. 17 (one day) to respond and give input to the survey. The email to the Class of 2027 appears to indicate that the most common themes were Eagles, Patriots and Wolves.

4. A graph chart that shows there were 134 responses with Wolves at 50.7 percent, Eagles at 26.1 percent and Patriots at 23.1 percent.

5. I received Jan. 25 board meeting “Highlights.”

6. I received Feb. 23 board meeting “Highlights.”

7. Again, I received the January, February and March school board agendas, but this is information I could have obtained on my own.

The following is my breakdown of the information received (trusting I received all documentation): Class of 2026 is the current freshmen class.

Class of 2027 is the current eighthgrade class.

Forty-eight submissions for the shared mascot were received (please note, there were 48 responses, some of which had multiple suggestions). Wolves and Eagles were listed once and Patriots was not even on the list.

The Class of 2027 had a day and a half to respond to the survey with three choices or common themes: Eagles, Patriots and Wolves. My question to this: How are these “common themes”?

January “Highlights” indicate: “Updates from the Joint board committee meeting were shared with co-op talks about colors and mascots to use for the coop teams.” Interesting questions would be: Who is on the joint board committee? How were committee members selected? When was the meeting? And, was there any notice to the communities? January “Highlights” was the first I’d heard about the committee and its “considerations” for mascots/colors. Considering the lack of transparency so far, I don’t think it’s too far of a guess that the majority of the community has not heard about the same.

February “Highlights” indicate: “Coop Colors and Mascot was discussed. Wolves mascot was the winner of the survey in both districts for the co-op team’s name. Using the colors of gray, white and black and incorporating a red/maroon somewhere in the mascot.” On the survey that was provided to me, Wolves and Eagles were suggested only one time. Patriots was not on the Greenwood survey at all. No report that I received even mentioned colors.

Further, let me highlight the date/ time stamps on the documents for which I paid $50. The first sheet has a stamp of 4/24/23, 3:36PM. The next two documents show 4/24/23, 3:37PM and 3:38PM. The final page with a date/time stamp is 4/24/23, 3:40PM. My calculation of time spent on these is four minutes. For the sake of being generous, I’ll round it up to 10 minutes as I did receive January and February “Highlights” and three months of agendas. I paid for two hours. I would have paid more to prove my point and verify my suspicions. I certainly hoped and wanted to be wrong in this case. However, the reports do not lie.

Another big concern is the rush factor on all of this. The wrestling, cross country and softball have been part of a co-op for years. What is the rush to change the mascots and colors? And more importantly, why this way?

I’m sadly disappointed in both Greenwood and Loyal’s administrations and school boards. I am proud of our communities and schools, but the lack of transparency, honesty and trust is more than alarming.

If you do not seek community involvement, do not expect community support. I truly believe that our communities and schools deserve better – better communication, procedures and certainly better transparency.

If the way this was handled matters as much to you as it does to me, please reach out. Let’s talk. I’m happy to share the documentation I was given. I can’t change this alone. It’s clear to me that Greenwood’s School Board believes that I’m the only one that feels this way. However, I know by talking with others in Greenwood and Loyal, there are others that feel that our communities deserve better. Let’s be heard. They will not listen to one, but they must listen to all.

I would invite the administration and school boards of Greenwood and Loyal to have an open meeting for discussion on this matter.