Special School Board meeting draws large crowd

By Tracy Ouellette

Editor

Community members showed up in force Dec. 2 for the East Troy Community School District Board of Education special meeting regarding the referendum the district is hoping to put forth next year to address the facility needs in its buildings.

Residents came prepared with suggestions, plans and a reminder that compromise was needed to move the district forward.

“There’s nobody in this room that’s going to get everything you want on the referendum,” Trisha Harris said. “The best we can do is look to the experts.”

Harris urged the board members to work together and put aside personal agendas to find a compromise.

She also wanted the board to carefully consider where the youngest of the children would be going to school because she had heard concerns from parents of the “little ones” who aren’t thrilled with the idea of their children going to a 4K through fifth-grade school with more than 700 students.

John Murphy said he was “all in favor of improving the schools” and wanted the board to look at the possibility of adding on to the Prairie View site and doing the planned High School renovations/additions from the last referendum with the same money.

Terry Dignan, who was a vocal opponent to the November referendum, spoke at length suggesting the board look into hiring a mediator to help address the working difficulties seen between the board members over the last referendum.

“The six or seven of you must somehow develop a level of trust with in yourselves and in the community,” Dignan said.

He chastised the board members for not addressing the issues with broken trust in private, “It’s inconceivable to me that you can’t level this out in closed session.”

However, open meeting laws only allow for closed session meetings under very strict circumstances and disagreements between board members wouldn’t qualify under the state statues.

Dignan asked to board to learn from previous boards and reminded the board members why the High School, Middle School and Prairie View were built where they are – to ensure safety, control traffic patterns and have room for expansion.

“That Doubek Elementary road is a death waiting to happen,” Dignan said. “It’s going to be a child running out and getting hit.”

Dignan also reminded the board to not ignore the needs of the Middle School and High School, especially in the area of technology, robotics and computers. He asked the board to look at the schools’ needs and “talk to the people in the classrooms.”

This sentiment was echoed by kindergarten teacher Vicki Ksobiech who said the board members should stop in the classrooms and “see what the space is like.”

“I think you need to look where the kids are. I think we owe that to the community. We owe that to the children of East Troy.”

Patrick Evans brought numbers, information and photos of the Reek Elementary School $2.8 million referendum that paid for the extensive renovation of the Lake Geneva school. He asked the board to look at what was accomplished in that renovation, which also included an 8-acre land purchase. He also questioned the reasoning behind expanding Doubek Elementary School in what he called a “land-locked” location when the Prairie View site was a better option to attracting new students in the district, especially those from Mukwonago.

Working session

After the public participation ended, the board got down to business with how to fix the problem they were presented with. The first item on the agenda was “Working to rebuild trust by establishing Board of Education “team norms.”

School Board President Ted Zess opened the discussion with a plea to the board members to find a way to work together for the betterment of the district.

“Trust is paramount if we are going ever going to have authentic conflict with strong commitment to decision and plans of action amidst disagreement,” Zess said.

He distributed copies of the book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” to the board members and asked them read it. He summarized the book and its five behaviors that lead to dysfunctional teams – absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results.

Board member Chris Smith said he felt trust had been broken with in the board, referring to the Oct. 29 East Troy Times ad that board members Martha Bresler and Dawn Buchholtz took out asking voters to vote no on the Nov. 4 referendum.

“When I saw that ad in the paper, I felt there was a lot of distrust,” Smith said. “I thought we had a lot of meaningful debates. I felt the biggest level of distrust when the ad came out.”

Bresler said she felt she wasn’t listened to when the High School administration came back with $5 million in cuts to the original proposed $12 million renovations/additions and she wanted to look at other uses for that $5 million they now had to work with.

“That left a whole lot of money we could use,” Bresler said. “We never even go to discuss any of those options. We got cut off that night. You kept saying ‘Are you going to change your vote?’ ‘My vote isn’t going to change.’”

“Meaningful discussion ended when we went to Doubek. We never went to Prairie View or the Middle School again,” she continued.

Bresler voiced concerns that the $11.7 million addition onto Doubek would have locked the district into having four campuses, which was in direct opposition to the district’s goal of efficiency.

Smith asked if the board needed to change the process of how they vote on things like the referendum and maybe take a step back when there isn’t agreement.

Zess steered the conversation back to the team norms they were trying to establish to rebuild the trust on the board and in the community.

“I do not distrust any individual on this board,” Bresler said. “I just don’t think we went back and examined all the options.”

Smith said the “hour-glass” was running out and all the options were presented and looked at and a compromise made.

Bresler made it a point to say it was difficult for her to sometimes have an answer “on the spot” and she needs time to process things.

“I think, in my mind, the decision was clear because of the timeliness,” Smith said.

“Some where down the line, someone needed to step up and say, ‘This is a problem,’” Buchholtz said.

Buchholtz reminded the board that she and Bresler read prepared statements at the meeting when the referendum vote was taken and the vote for the resolution was a 3-2 vote on three separate instances.

Zess said at the time, it seemed to be a trust issue. “You didn’t seem to trust the administration and the architect.”

Buchholtz said she had some problems with some of the things said to members of the community by the construction company and architects that weren’t truthful, in her opinion.

She said there are still some issues in that regard that she wants to see addressed.

Bresler said that when the large Doubek addition was being pushed, it looked like other things became more expensive.

Board members Steve Lambrechts pointed out a lot of that had to do with the scope of the projects being considered because of the ratio of new to old in renovating existing buildings and when it’s above a certain percentage, everything has to be updated.

The board members talked about the team norms Zess presented them with and said they’d like time to look them over and discuss them at the next working session. They agreed a compromise needed to be found and Smith said bringing in someone from the outside to help them like Dignan suggested earlier in the evening might be something to look at.

While they had a lot to debate, the board did agree on one thing – time is of the essence with looming operation needs and delayed maintenance projects. The board members agreed special meetings would be needed to get the district ready for another referendum next year.

Whether to try for an April referendum was weighed against the time constraints of getting a resolution done by January so it could be put on the ballot. The option to hold a special election in November was brought up, but Zess worried that the community might think the district was trying to sneak it past when it wouldn’t be part of a general election. Smith said that if the district did its job and properly informed the community of the referendum, he didn’t think it would be a problem.

If you go…

WHAT: School Board working referendum session

WHERE: East Troy High School, 3128 Graydon Ave.

WHEN: 7 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 16

For more information, visit www.easttroy.k12.wi.us.