When is it judicious for a school district to follow the law and its own board policies?

Our answer: Always.

It is a question public officials — elected, hired and appointed — should find no room to ponder.

In Wisconsin, we are governed by laws of transparency, defined within a layman’s dictionary most simply as “the quality of being open to public scrutiny.”

The term “leak” is defined as “intentionally disclosing something private or secret.”

One might contend it would be a difficult task to simultaneously be private and public, transparent and secret.

Alignment between these concepts: private and secret, public and transparent, is more easily forged. 

School board officials, like all public officials, are meant, as a matter of law, to be transparent. If they are respectfully and thoughtfully serving their constituencies, they are not operating in secrecy, and therefore, the concept of “leaking” is rendered disabled.

If secrecy is embraced, it is the vessel of transparency from which the officials have disembarked.

In an earlier editorial, we presented information from the Wisconsin Attorney General’s Office’s guide to open meeting laws, which states: “The State of Wisconsin recognizes the importance of having a public informed about governmental affairs. The state’s open meeting law declares that: In recognition of the fact that a representative government of the American type is dependent upon an informed electorate, it is declared to be the policy of this state that the public is entitled to the fullest and most complete information regarding the affairs of government as is compatible with the conduct of governmental business.”

Additionally, the document states: “In order to advance this policy, the open meeting law requires that ‘all meetings of all state and local governmental bodies shall be publicly held in places reasonably accessible to members of the public and shall be open to all citizens at all times unless otherwise expressly provided by law. There is thus a presumption that meetings of governmental bodies must be held in open session. Although there are some exemptions allowing closed sessions in specified circumstances, they are to be invoked sparingly and only where necessary to protect the public interest.”

The full document from the attorney general’s office is found here: https://www.doj.state.wi.us/sites/default/files/office-open-government/Resources/OML-GUIDE.pdf.

Recently WhitewaterWise obtained a 2,557-word letter, along with other documents, sent in late April by then-school board president Larry Kachel to six members of the school board. They are: Miguel Aranda, Stephanie Hicks, Lisa Huempfner, Jennifer Kienbaum, Christy Linse, and Maryann Zimmerman. Elected earlier in April to fill an empty seat vacated by Kachel, Jeff Tortomasi was not included as a recipient of the correspondence.

The six members, along with Tortomasi, comprise this year’s Whitewater Unified School District Board of Education. 

The email from Kachel notes that it is: “My last act as a board member.”

The full letter follows.

April 20, 2024

Fellow Board Members:

First, I ask that all of you treat this communication with the strictest of confidences. Do not respond to me in writing, do not share with anyone not on the board.

Enclosed, please find a memorandum I received from Dr. Pate Hefty around March 4, 2024, in response to the requests made by our Board at our February 24, 2024, closed session meeting.  I did not immediately send this out to the Board for several reasons.

I did not want to, in any way, affect the election process for board member Zimmerman.  I believed the ultimate determination of her standing on the board should be determined by the voters.  The voters spoke loudly and for her second consecutive election gave her the most votes of all candidates.  Although I have disagreed with some of her methods, Maryann, like everyone else, has constitutional rights. 

I also did not want to negatively influence Dr. Pate Hefty’s chances for the Racine District Superintendent job.  I also believed that she may have applied to other districts. As far as I know, she may still be a candidate in other districts. Caroline has every right to pursue gainful employment.

Our board has had a problem with leaks, and it has been more than just one person engaging in less than desirable behavior.  More than one person has made posts on Facebook that have at least indirectly touched on topics that we have discussed in various closed sessions.  When you add to this the fact that both Maryann and Caroline had “lawyered up”, it made things even more complicated.  Any quick decision could have brought legal action from either side.  I intended to get this out after election certification, but tax season and (he cited a personal cause) have slowed me down.

My disagreements with Dr. Pate Hefty in the past are well known by this board.  They are mostly about management style.  However, the district has shown many improvements over the past couple of years.  As president, I have had to put my personal beliefs aside and attempt to do what I have felt is best for the district and the board.  I had many discussions with our board’s legal counsel throughout the past several months as to the “pay raise” issue, among other things. I also discussed at length the process for possible non-renewal of Dr. Pate Hefty’s contract.  I made the decision that unless I had a majority of members wanting that action without my vote, I would not proceed with that option. I would not even bring up the option for a possible vote unless I had a majority wanting non-renewal without my vote.  I know this has frustrated Maryann.  A non-renewal action that becomes public knowledge is the kiss of death for a school district employee and can greatly hinder their ability to get future employment in the education field.  It opens a district up to a potential lawsuit, plus possibly some of the remaining salary costs in the existing contract.  With all that had transpired and with my actual knowledge that leaks were likely to occur, I felt I could not choose this option without potentially putting the district at risk for many hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs/judgements.  Several years ago, the school board was able to deal with a potential non-renewal/resignation of a superintendent in a completely secret way.  That board was able to do so without any leaks, as far as I know. I did not believe that our board would have been able to do the same.

With advisement from our board attorney, I chose to let the public speak at our recent open sessions with wide latitude. I was also personally verbally attacked by some of those comments regarding the “pay raise” issue and for lack of transparency.  We have been less than transparent on this and several other issues and need to do a better job.  I clearly stated in our December closed session I did not have full knowledge of how the pay raise was given, but I took the verbal arrows from the public because I felt at that time it was best for the district. I will speak on this topic later. Whether it was one, two, or three members that had knowledge is largely irrelevant, as a formal vote should have been taken.

I also believe that it was the wrong time for a non-renewal.  We are finally starting to show improvements in proficiency and Forward testing scores.  We have just implemented the first phase of SOR (Science of Reading) and will start the pilot program in September.  I personally have felt that SOR was the way to go since spending many hours learning about the concept at the January 2021 WASB Convention.  As we all know, the program now is a state-wide mandate.

A removal of the superintendent at that time would have been extremely counterproductive and would have brought our “improvement momentum” to a halt. We would also likely lose some additional quality administrative staff.  I believe such an action would likely put us behind up to two years in the successful implementation of the SOR Program.  We are already starting to show improvement in reading proficiency.  We have also made improvements in math, district wide.  Agree or disagree with my actions, but that was the process I went through.  Trust me, I thought long and hard about what to do.  With the recent improvements in overall school performance, I simply felt considering a non-renewal with a likely split 3-3 vote was not the way to go.  My vote would have needed to be the fourth vote.

At our February closed session, I learned for the first time that an additional back pay bonus had been given to BP.  I mistakenly said that I thought it was part of several small bonuses that were handed out to several employees in the past.  Sadly, I misspoke.  Jen seemed to be the only board member that had actual knowledge of this bonus. 

The day after the February closed session meeting, I sent a short public statement from me on behalf of the board to Jaclyn and Caroline for release.  The statement was at our attorney’s suggestion.  He largely drafted the short statement, with me adding the last line:  generic, non-accusatory, and quite simple.  However, Caroline refused to send it out, making no comment to me as to why.  Again, because of the above-mentioned reasons, I chose to not pursue further.  Inappropriate behavior on the part of Caroline, to say the very least.  See enclosure. 

Back to the December closed session meeting.  We all know that the superintendent and the board look bad because of the actions taken in the early spring of 2023.  Why our previous president, vice-president, and Caroline thought this was a good idea is beyond my comprehension.  I was very clear in that meeting that when Caroline told me in late winter of 2023 that she wanted to give BP a pay raise of about $10,000 because he was being poached by another district, I told her” To get the board to go along, I think he needs to have some real additional duties added to his role.”   I had assumed the board would vote on it, and I would have voted yes if the duties added were real.  When no formal action was taken, I assumed that Caroline would bring it at some point in the future if she thought it was still necessary to retain BP.   Although the pay raise was “technically” in the budget under the general administrator’s area, I did not know that the pay raise was in there.  I also believe at least five other board members did not know it either.  This is especially unfair to the three board members that were elected in April 2023, as all of this happened before they were elected.

Earlier that month, I was asked by Caroline to give approval for a pay raise for JH without full board approval.  I know that John has done outstanding work. She stated that she was concerned about leaks.  After thinking about it for an hour or two, I told her that the board would need to vote on it.  I have never wavered from the belief that pay raises need to be publicly voted on, and normal, proper procedures should be followed.  It was at that point that I realized BP may have been given a raise without a full board vote.  I later asked BP to give me a current list of administration salaries.  It was then that I saw his pay increase from last year to this year was at a much higher percentage than any of the other administrators.  So, I put that topic on the agenda for the December closed session.  It was decided at that meeting to bring the pay raise for JH back to the board in April or May as part of the normal budget process.

If Caroline had simply apologized at that closed meeting for making a misstep, I believe at least six members of the Board would have been satisfied and this whole issue and all the legal costs and public outcry that occurred may have never happened. We agreed as a board that we would prevent it from happening in the future by making policy changes, which have occurred.  At that meeting It was when Caroline tried to justify her actions with the use of the $5000 limits that she and BP had under Board Policy 672.1-Methods of Purchasing, that all hell broke loose.  In effect, she was saying that BP had the ability to approve at least partially his own pay raise.  Although not intended, I believe this statement may have effectively “thrown Ben under the bus”.   I do not fault BP for this statement, as I don’t believe he was initially asked to effectively “approve part of his own raise”.  The statement using Policy 672.1 as justification was unnecessary and counterproductive.

I reached out to two former WWUSD board presidents with about 20 years overall board experience and in general terms asked if they had ever approved a pay raise of any type without a formal board vote.  Of course, the answer was no.

Please see enclosed legal opinion regarding the “pay raise” issue.  I asked our attorney to write this after our December meeting, along with the procedure for non-renewal of a contract.  I chose to not  release this to the board until now, because of the leak and other issues previously mentioned.   

We have had two good administrators resign at least partly because of the way this pay raise issue was handled.  I believe the board is unfairly getting most of the blame for these resignations. This whole mess has happened because an action was taken, although not technically illegal, but not a best, nor even a good practice.  I discussed at length with our attorney as to the legality of the method used to give BP a raise without a full board vote.  He told me that technically the action was not illegal the way our policies were written, but it would be best to fix the problem with policy changes to clear up any potential ambiguities for the future.  We have made those changes.  We all know the process used a year ago showed a lack of transparency.

In terms of achievement, we truly are starting from the bottom as we trail virtually all our surrounding districts in proficiency scores.  We have great report card scores at Washington, but not so great scores at the other grade schools nor the middle school. Although we are seeing improvements.  I believe the district should look at duplicating what is going on at Washington. Tom Grosinske and his staff are obviously doing something right. Yes, Washington has slightly smaller classes, but the demographics regarding both EL, special education and poverty are very similar to Lincoln.

It is also a simple fact that we have lost too many good teachers and staff throughout the district over the past several years.  Many reasons exist for those departures, but Caroline’s management style is a key reason for some of those who have left.   We would be making even greater improvements if many of those quality staff members were still at WWUSD.

I believe it is time for the school district to move on from the pay raise issue.  Mistakes were made and I must take my share of the blame.  We have given the issue a little more time to cool down. I believe that the good things that we are getting done, and the progress that is being made regarding Improved scores, outweighs the need for any “payback” from either Caroline or Maryann on the pay raise and leaks issues.  We have already changed our board policy so that any raises in the future will need a board vote.

Maryann and her attorney agreed with Attorney Waterman and me in our private meeting in late March to the establishment of some sort of reasonable code of ethics for the board to implement, if it so desires, regarding board member conduct issues in the future.  According to our attorney, presently the only real options our board has regarding member conduct are censure and/or removal by board vote as an executive officer or committee member.  Censure has no real legal effect, and often just inflames the issue at hand. Our attorney dealt with four censure considerations in other districts over the past school year, and no censure actions were implemented.  I chose to do neither because of the potential election interference issue and because I believed it would just add fuel to the fire.  I also believe that the lack of transparency on this issue, on a matter that should have been voted on, outweighs Maryann’s conduct.  Maryann has done so many things for this district in additional volunteer activities and truly wants to do what is best for the students.  It is time to move forward.

Although I still disagree with many things that Caroline has done in the past and especially the last few months, I have weighed the good with the bad.  Caroline has recruited many good administrators to our district and has led the process of overall improvement in proficiency district-wide in many areas. She has also done a great job dealing with the overwhelming immigrant influx issue and restructuring the EL program to attempt to meet the high demand, the cost of which will ultimately be borne by local taxpayers.  Our district simply does not have the resources available to handle this issue. 

I have tried to do what I have felt is best for the board and the district.  I have enjoyed most of my time on the board and wish all of you the best of luck.  As I have mentioned before, I really have enjoyed the diversity of board member opinions. This July I will be visiting Tennessee to look at availability of a potential place to spend major portions of future winters outside of Wisconsin, starting in late 2025 or 2026, depending on implementation of my upcoming practice merger.

So concludes the letter from the now-former school board president.

One hopes this new board, absent Kachel, and including Tortomasi, led by newly elected President Jen Kienbaum, is flush with desire to fully embrace transparency.

As always,

Thanks for reading.

Kim McDarison, editor