The Board of Education is meeting 01/11/2021 at 6pm.
Of particular interest is that they “will entertain a motion to convene in closed session, pursuant to s. 19.85(1)(f) and under the attorney-client privilege to review and discuss social or personal histories and/or specific charges concerning specific persons with legal counsel.”
After returning to open session “the Board may conduct further review and/or have further discussion concerning the histories and/or charges reviewed and discussed in closed session and may (1) take further, supplemental action concerning a prior Board appointment to fill a vacancy on the Board, or (2) take no further action.”
Presumably this action is about recent Board appointee Edward Ruffolo and the fact that, immediately after he was appointed, it came to light that he followed quite a few erotica pages on Facebook.
screen capture of Edward Ruffolo’s Facebook page
Although he is the IT Director at Miron Construction, he claimed, per the Post Crescent article, that his following of these pages was an accident and that he “must’ve clicked on something I shouldn’t have.” He also essentially claimed total ignorance of how Facebook works and the dynamics of following/unfollowing pages…even though, again it should be noted, he is the IT Director at Miron Construction.
[While the pages he followed were not pornography and are not illegal, the fact that he was publicly following them instead of keeping his interest in them private really does make one question his judgement. And the general sleaziness of his interests doesn’t necessarily look good, particularly given that his appointment to the Appleton Board of Education comes only two months after Appleton Area School District teacher Brian Dimmer was charged with four felonies related to an inappropriate relationship he had with a student.]
Though not as juicy, there are other items on the agenda.
They’ll be considering a resolution promoted by the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to amongst other things create a state-wide one percent sales tax to pay for school infrastructure and technology, expand broadband access across the state, hold school districts harmless for their enrollment numbers during Covid, and change the law requiring annual assessments so that they do not apply during a pandemic, make school Superintendent evaluations confidential. Those are just a sample. You can download the PDF of all the proposed resolutions here:
They will also be considering a resolution authorizing the issuance and sale of $4.5 million worth of General Obligation Bonds to refund a portion of a 2013 bond issuance.
There will also be various reports including an update on their Safe and Resilient Return plan. Although it was thought that during the 01/11 meeting, the Board would be officially voting on confirming that in-person education would start on 01/19 there appear to be no action items about that. Emails have already been sent out to all the teachers telling them that they are moving forward with their reopening plans, and the Board had given authority to the administration to move between instructional models without Board approval, so a Board vote is not necessary.
You can view full meeting details here: http://go.boarddocs.com/wi/aasd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=BX3RH56B9D0C
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