Legislative forum,

from p. 23 mental health services in the schools. Greget noted that there have been students who have died by suicide during his time in Medford, with three students in the past two years.

“This is something near and dear to my heart,” James said. He spoke as a parent and shared the experience of having his daughter’s suicide plans discovered, fortunately in time to get her the help she needed.

“Our kids are suffering,” he said. He said parents needed to be more engaged with their children.

“We only get one chance to be parents,” he said, noting that when kids suffer, they turn to drugs and other behaviors.

“We need to have conversations with our kids,” he said, adding that parents need to ask the question to their kids if they are planning to die by suicide.

“If I had lost my daughter, I don’t know what I would have done,” James said.

Snyder echoed James’ sentiments and talked about a teacher in the D.C. Everest district who was strangled by a student and is currently suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. “She felt the school district didn’t have her back and that they don’t stand up for teachers,” Snyder said of that instance and how this contributes to the high turnover in special education teachers.

Rozar said there are some bright spots. She spoke of joining the state lieutenant governor in going to Colby schools and reviewing the innovative things they are doing there to engage students and have the students working with other students to address mental health concerns.

She said peer pressure is an awful thing in schools these days and noted that in places like Colby they are turning it around to be a positive thing.

Start date Patrick Galligan, administrator of the Colby School District, spoke in support of giving additional flexibility to the Department of Public Instruction to allow local school districts to have an earlier start date. For more than 20 years the start date for schools has been set at Sept. 1. School districts have long criticized this lack of local control.

Galligan said in recent years the DPI has seen a dramatic increase in the number of districts requesting an earlier start date. He said the number has gone from 18 in one year to 101 last school year. He said the current rule is inflexible and outdated.

In a recent public hearing held by the DPI on potentially loosening the guidelines for grant exceptions to the law, there were 600 people speaking in favor of the rule change and 60 entities opposed. Galligan said the current Sept. 1 start date puts Wisconsin students at a disadvantage for things such as advanced placement coursework and in competing with students in other states with earlier start times.

“We want to be able to do what is best for our community,” Galligan said.

Felzkowski noted that tarring and feathering wasn’t a good look for her in suggesting the idea as the senator for a heavily tourism-dependent area. She again noted the value of having a grassroots effort with parents calling for change.

She said that if parents knew their kids were at a competitive disadvantage with starting later, they would push for a change. She said there needed to be more than 600, with numbers of 60,000 or even 6,000 able to make a change. She said having a grassroots movement in favor of it will give her the reason why she should support it.

She also noted the reality of a rule change from the DPI getting approved, since it has to go through legislative review and can be blocked at multiple points and sent back for rewrites.

Summerfield said there may be room for compromise in this, noting that despite it being sometimes considered a dirty word in modern politics, there was still a potential for sides to sit down and see if there was a way to give additional flexibility.

Sullivan also noted that as a former principal at Northland Pines, there may not be as much support for a later start date as people may think. Snyder said he agrees with local control and that things may have changed in the time since the law was put in place.

“This mandate from the early 2000s is a little outdated,” he said.

Rozar agreed, noting there has been a shift in the state away from being an agrarian community and that kids aren’t on the farm anymore.