SHAWANO, WI- Communication and community frustration were discussed at the last Shawano School Board Executive Committee meeting. Board member Chuck Dallas addressed recent conversations and events that have occurred in the community, including a large showing and an hours worth of public comments at the last school board meeting.
“Truly, Monday night was a factor of lack of communication from us to the public,” Dallas said. That night, parents, current staff, former staff members and community members addressed the board about issues including a budget deficit, ESSER funds added positions and added spending in central office, as well as the loss of staff members. He said that more communication is needed because people are coming up with their own conclusions. “There is all kinds of confusion with ESSER funds,” he told Anderson. “I think there are people that think we are lining our pockets with ESSER funds. ” He said that confusion is also noticed when it comes to the communities perception of the use of consultants. “You are bringing people in for their expertise but I think it seems that people think that you are bringing them in for someone to have coffee and a Danish with, but when you lack expertise in an area, you bring in a consultant and that is not uncommon at all.”
Dallas requested a strong effort in communication with the community, but Anderson said the frustration that is being felt in the community comes from change.
“You hired me to make a difference in the system. Anytime you talk about change, you are going to have a disruption in system and right now we have a disruption in the system because we have had significant change,” Anderson said. “Some of the change is out of our control and some of the change is rumor and myths, but what we are doing is working.”
Anderson said the changes that have been made are to fix a key problem that she saw coming into the position. “We sit in the bottom 13 percent of the state and I am not okay with that as a parent, and I am not okay with that as a Superintendent,” Anderson told the committee. “We have 30 percent of our students proficient across our grade levels and we have had that for years.” Anderson said that means 7 kids out of 10 kids that are graduating from Shawano are not proficient. “I believe we have the staff and the resources and the commitments to do things differently, and in order to do that, we needed to address our curriculum, resources and we needed to address our system that was not in place. If we stay the course we can be the district of choice, and we can have students that our graduating across the top 10 percent of the state.”
Dallas said one piece of information that is misunderstood is the wage increases in the district office. “Administration salaries overall went up 18 percent, but that is because we added a couple of positions,” Anderson explained. “Unless the compensation study identified that the position was underpaid based off of compensation study, not a single administrator received more that what our support staff or our teachers did.”
Dallas said there is still thought that Admin costs are higher than they were before and the concern that Admin got an 18 percent increase needs to be addressed.
“If anyone here looks at me and says you are okay that this district sits in the bottom 13 percent of the state, then yes, I will talk about changing course, but I am not okay with that,” Anderson said. “We have to make some changes if we are going to expect different results, but at the end of the day, the discomfort comes from change, we disrupted the system and change is hard.”
School Board President Michael Sleeper said he too has heard some of the comments throughout the community. “There are flat out intentionally incorrect statements that are being made and we can’t just sit back and take the punishment,” Sleeper said.” We need to dispel all the myths that are out there right now.”
Anderson questioned how many people are expressing concerns.
“We are community of 9000 and we have a small group of people, the same common core group of people who are interacting and feeding information,” Anderson told the committee. “It’s 10 to 20 individuals and some of that information is accurate and some is inaccurate and in my mind, conversations need to be had with those people who are feeding the inaccurate information.
Board member Alysia Pillsbury said there should still be an invitation to an informational night. Dallas said people should be reaching out individually and said past informational nights have not had good turnouts. “It is easier to complain then it is to go to a meeting.”
Anderson started to dispel some of those myths to the committee. She explained that a couple of positions were added in district office, but one was created to insure that the district data is accurate. She told the committee that in 2017-2018, the district inaccurately reported their enrollment to the state and that error would have shown a significant less number of students than what they actually had. She said they were able to correct that, but one of the new positions works to make sure something like that does not happen again. “We have not spent a dime of the latest round of ESSER dollars,” Anderson said. That is over 3 million dollars.
Anderson told the committee that she does not want to be reactive, but Dallas said now may be the time to do just that.
“It’s hurting moral and trust in the school and what we are doing right now to communicate is not working, and that may just be my opinion, but you don’t have as many people showing up for a school board meeting when you are communicating properly.” Dallas added that you don’t want to be reactive, but you have to if you are starting to lose trust in the community. “I can’t be on a board that is actually impacting other things that I am doing, and it is getting close to that.”
“We are being blamed for lack of transparency, which may be true to a certain level. but at the same time, the media maybe has not been completely transparent with everything, our family members haven’t been and it is an all the way around situation, but I do know that those who come to talk to us, they seem to have a better understanding and now that we have their attention, it may be good time to do this,” board member Mike Musolff said.
Sleeper said he feels that people feel caught off guard when change happens and their is not any kind of warning through communication. “We are not trying to keep anything from people, it is just we know what is happening, but we have to really think through and execute that long runway before the plane is ready to take off.”
Anderson explained some ways in which they have been trying to communicate. “We have an event every week this month where we are available to talk to people and answer questions. We have done the financial 101 and Hawk Talks and my door is always open to anyone who wants to have a conversation. ” Anderson said that they have asked every building administrator to share two stories a month to put the positive out there and we have had an increase in our social media. “We have not had a plan as a district, and it is one of the pieces that we need to get in place.”
She also explained a new plan to create a summary of every board meeting so the parents, staff and community can be informed about what happened. “After every board meeting, within that week, we are going to communicate out a summary of what happened at the board meeting so parents get that information,” said Anderson. She said it would not be minutes from the meeting because they do not get approved until the next meeting.
Dallas said the worry that is going on is not good for the district. “The number one key to change management is communication. I am all about change and I think you are doing a great job with what we need to do, but we are not communicating enough and we want to retain our good teachers, but right now we have a worried teacher population, a worried community and parent population and you probably have a worried admin team population that is wondering what is next.”
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