by Scott Jentsch

The School Board met May 23, 2022 at Elmwood Elementary School. The meeting was preceded by a musical performance from Elmwood students, led by music teacher Jacki Thering.

As is customary when the School Board meetings are held at the schools, a presentation about the host school was given by principal Jaime Veal and associate principal Ryan Samz. During the presentation, they talked about their goals as a school building in Literacy and Social Emotional Learning. They also recounted a recent activity where the entire school read the same book, which was funded by the Elmwood Home & School Association.

A school tour was given, where students demonstrated projects in the maker space, which is located adjacent to the library. Elmwood Elementary is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and I recall when we were given the chance to tour the previous Elmwood building during the referendum informational effort to replace it. This building is an example of what can be done when the School District presents the community with the information it needs to make an informed decision about major capital projects.

Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Fellowship Awards

Ms. Thering was among four educators recognized for being chosen as Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Fellowship Award winners. She was joined by Pat Detmer (special education teacher, New Berlin West), Lisa Vega (18-21-year-old Pathways Program special education teacher, Eisenhower), and Maggie Lannoye (occupational therapist, Orchard Lane). According to the Foundation website, 100 award winners are recognized for their "excellence and innovation in the state of Wisconsin" in an effort to support teachers looking to improve themselves and/or their classrooms. Each teacher and each of their schools will receive $6,000 grants.

ESSER Funds Update

Board President Janet Schulz explained her question from the May 9, 2022 meeting, where she asked if ESSER funds could be used to pay down the debt or lower the tax levy. She attempted to explain her question as representative of a question that she received from "the community" and as an opportunity for clarification in the public forum for all to benefit from. You can decide for yourself by watching the question she asked on May 9, and then her "clarification" at this meeting. Whichever the case, at least now everyone is clear on the fact that we cannot apply ESSER funds right away to reduce the debt or reduce taxes. Let's hope the Board is equally clear that the community expects that these funds be used to address the impacts of the pandemic on the students in our School District.

Speaking of how the community wants to see the ESSER funds spent, are you aware that the State of Wisconsin requires school districts to survey the various stakeholders in the community to gather feedback about how the funds should be spent in each school district? You would be forgiven if you do not recall there being such a survey sent by the School District of New Berlin. While other school districts have done quick and simple feedback forms to gather valuable feedback from the school community and the community at large, our School District took another route.

Instead of a survey sent out specifically for the purpose of gathering feedback on a single subject, an E-Mail address for providing feedback was provided on a slide at the end of a presentation at the Annual Budget meeting.

You saw that slide, right?

Superintendent Joe Garza addressed my concern during the meeting, and he mentioned the slide in the presentation at the Budget Hearing and Annual Meeting. He mentioned that there was a link to that E-Mail address on the District website, but when I searched, I could not find it. Not surprisingly, Garza stated in the meeting that "the feedback has been minimal."

In my experience with corporate communications and marketing (and how it would apply to this situation), when you want to hear from the community, staff, students and parents, you go out of your way to make sure that as many people see the information, understand what feedback you're looking for, and then provide multiple high-profile opportunities for people to respond. When you don't want feedback, you make it hard for people to provide it.

Which is the best way, and which is the bare minimum to meet the requirements of the assignment? Which provides the best example to our students?

In addition to my concern about the School District obtaining valuable feedback from the stakeholders, Board member Krislyn Wondrachek asked at the previous meeting why other school districts received more funding than New Berlin did. In my recap of the May 9 meeting, I mentioned that community member Sharon R. indicated that it was based on funding formulas related to 2020-21 Every Student Succeeds Act, Title I, Part A. This might explain why the School District of New Berlin received an average per-student amount that was $100 less than others, such as the Elmbrook School District.

Superintendant Garza provided this explanation (recorded here verbatim, to the best of my ability, please watch the video for the explanation in real-time):

What I can tell you, is, that we actually as the School District of New Berlin received more formula grant dollars, ah, which means that Elmbrook would receive more additional funding to $578, but we get $54 more in the formula grant. They get $54 more in additional funding. They received that, and that's per student. Ah, they received slightly more in-person instruction hours because they had more calculated hours, mainly due to enrollment. As you know, Elmbrook has more students than we do, uh, and so, and that's based on the formula, that they would, they would in fact get more to reimburse that. Just like, for example, MPS is almost getting a billion dollars, which we are not, uh, every district is different, uh, and there are different, uh, adjustments within that formula that would definitely make a big difference, uh, in that calculation. Or a nuance that would make it different as to why they're getting more than we would. Um, but, you know we received less than some school districts, but we also received more than some other school districts, based on all those variables that were mentioned.

The portion of the meeting video is available here.

I'm not sure that his explanation matches with the information that I have found and have been given. The per-student funding amount would not be affected the relative number of students in any school district, so there must be other factors, such as the funding formula mentioned by Sharon R. He alludes to a funding formula, but then doesn't really explain why the formula works out so that Elmbrook received $100 more per student than New Berlin did. (Of the five neighboring school districts that I found, only one received less than New Berlin, by $1.33 per student)

I don't have any evidence that the School District of New Berlin was denied funding due to something we could control, but the explanation given certainly does not answer the question directly and sufficiently. Word salads sound good when they're being spoken, but when examined for their content, they rarely provide useful content, much less a coherent narrative. His explanation could have been shortened to "The state applies a funding formula, which resulted in New Berlin receiving less per student than other districts, but more than others." It's such a short explanation that it would have invited a follow-up question of "what part of the formula resulted in the lower per-student funding compared to Elmbrook?" -- which might have resulted in the information that would have answered the original question.

We have lots of messaging issues like this in the School District of New Berlin, and non-answers create dissatisfaction that can result in distrust when it happens too often for too long. To increase trust in the District leadership, such occurrences need to be minimized.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be held at Eisenhower Middle High School on June 13, 2022.

Last Updated: Jun 15, 2022

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