Conversation With Board of Education President Kay Eggert

On 03/04/2021 I spoke with Appleton Area School District Board of Education President Kay Eggert.

I specifically reached out to her to learn more about whether Ed Ruffolo was actively seeking a position on the Board of Education after he told the Post Crescent that he would not be campaigning and also to get her comments on Board member Jim Bowman’s involvement with the private campaign event that took place on 03/03/2021.

Our conversation ended up covering more territory than just the Ed Ruffolo situation and may be of interest to readers. I left her a voicemail clearly identifying myself as Jessica Anderson from All Things Appleton. She called me back, and at no point during our conversation did she indicate that anything was off the record.

As posted earlier, I started off asking her if Ed Ruffolo is campaigning. Is Board member Jim Bowman involved? Is the Board of Education involved?

She stated that the Board would not be involved in any campaign activity; however, individual members, in their own time and outside of their capacity as Board members, do not lose their First Amendment rights and are allowed to be individually involved in things. Individually, they can support a specific candidate and vote how they want. [This was reiterated at the recent Board of Education meeting by both Kay and Jim Bowman.]

I told her that, in the past, multiple parents had asked if the Board recruits candidates and had essentially been told that, no, the Board does not recruit or seek out candidates. I wanted to know if they were telling these parents that the Board does not recruit while at the same time Board members were, as individuals, recruiting and seeking people to serve as candidates.

Her experience was that she had sometimes told friends she thought they would enjoy being on the Board, but those people never ran. [I would not necessarily expect her to be able to comment on these types of activities on the parts of other Board members.]

Kay then brought up the Appleton Education Foundation and how, because of the overlap between AASD’s mission and AEF’s mission that it is natural for people to both volunteer in AEF and then move on to serving as Board of Education members. She used herself as an example as someone who served on AEF for many years before deciding she wanted to serve on the Board of Education. She did not think there was anything intentional behind multiple former AEF volunteers being on the Board of Education.

I told her that the concern about AEF is that their donor list is filled with person after person after person who is an Appleton Area School District employee. What happens when a person spends years at AEF gaining relationships with these AASD employees, then they move over to serving on the Board of Education where they’re supposed to now be overseeing the people who were colleagues and donors at AEF? The concern is that they’re supposed to represent all stakeholders but they’re naturally going to lean toward the one group of stakeholders that they’ve had the most contact with, educators, vs parents and other community members.

Kay started to explain to me how AEF’s grant program works and said that the Board of Education doesn’t have anything to do with deciding who gets AEF grants. She said that that’s not the only group of stakeholders they would consider.

I responded that the way the Board has acted thus far has very much deferred to that specific group of stakeholders. (AASD employees). They haven’t done listening sessions with parents even though parents have been asking for that for months and even though other school districts have done that for their parents.

Kay said that they have received hundreds and hundreds of emails and letters.

I told her I thought that parents wanted to do some kind of live event where they could speak face to face, whether in-person or on Zoom, but the Board has not accommodated that. Now they’re at the point where 27% of high schoolers are failing at least one class and parents are very upset. On top of that, they now have this situation where Mr. Ruffolo told the community that he wouldn’t be campaigning, but now he seems to be campaigning and a member of the Board seems to be assisting him. Did she recognize that that would look bad to the community?

Kay did not know whether it was truthful or accurate that a Board member was involved.

I told her that I had contacted Jim Bowman but that he had not gotten back to me. I then went on to describe the type of involvement in the campaign event that Jim has been alleged to have had. [Note: Jim has since obliquely acknowledged that he’s campaigning for Mr. Ruffolo.]

Kay then stated that if Jim participated on his own time and as an individual then it would not be a violation or illegal. He has the right to do that.

I agreed that was true, but I wondered from an ethical standpoint if Kay thought this situation looked good. Did she think that it reflected well on Jim, Ed, or the Board as a whole for this campaign event to be happening behind closed doors that the public is not privy to–particularly after Mr. Ruffolo said that he would not be campaigning.

Kay wouldn’t weigh in on that and said it was a question to ask Ed.

I pointed out that she is the Board President and, therefore, the most public face of the Board right now.

She reiterated she had no grounds to say anything was wrong because the Board didn’t do anything.

I asked her if she, personally, would be comfortable doing something like that. Would it feel ethical to her to act that way?

She said it would be hard to speculate and reiterated that Jim had a right as an individual to do that. I may not like it, she may not like it, and people may not think it looks right, but it’s not illegal and it would not be grounds for the Board to take any action because it’s within an individual’s right to utilize their freedom of speech.

I agreed with that, but pointed out that, at the same time, there’s a dynamic of the school Board and the Administration looking very sneaky by not communicating well and doing things without involving parents and trying to push aside active community involvement. The way the Appleton Area School Board and the Administrative Team have handled the pandemic for this last year has left many community members with a very bad taste in their mouth, and now this is one more thing on top of that. Did she have any plans to try to do things that will make people think better of AASD, and the Board, and the Administrative team?

She said that a major priority was to focus on meeting the needs of the students by getting them back into the classrooms and addressing missed learning. A lot of students have done “okay” with virtual learning, but some haven’t which was sad. She talked about her experiences as a grandparent helping to oversee virtual education this fall, and said it was challenging. She said there’s been a lot of scrutiny and criticism and there will be more. That’s what they’re in for. She said she knows we are going to get through this. She can’t wait to feel like things are back to some sort of normal.

She said that there’s going to be federal money directed toward schools that they can use over the next two and half years. The district is deciding how to use that.

Speaking of funding, I told her I watched the school board forum where she spoke against vouchers. I told her I used to be opposed to vouchers also, but this last year has left me wondering if many of the problems that AASD is facing right now (such as having all these students and not being able to meet their needs) would have been more easily fixed by having money go with a student so that the the parents could send their children to whichever school they thought would best meet their needs.

Kay reiterated that she was opposed to private school vouchers.

I asked her, even though AASD has obviously not been able to deal with all of the students’ needs and 27% of high schooler’s are failing, did she still think AASD should have a monopoly on providing education to students with taxpayer dollars?

Kay didn’t think it should be called a monopoly.

I told her that either a person is wealthy enough to pay $5,000 plus per child per year to send them to private school or they sent them to public school. That’s pretty much a monopoly for anybody who’s lower income. Did she really think parents should have to rely on this district and this Board, who have not been responsive to them, and who have been dragging their feet, and who are offering a product that has resulted in 27% of high schoolers failing at least one class?

Kay wanted to know what I thought they should do.

I told her I thought they should have offered in person classes to those who wanted it from the start, all through the pandemic, as some schools did.

Kay disagreed.

I told her that my recollection was that a majority of parents early on were in favor of in person classes.

Kay said that they were in favor of the hybrid model, but then the rates exploded. She asked me to recall the context of what initially was happening.

[Note: According to the pulse survey sent on to parents last summer 64.5% of parents were in favor of traditional in-person instruction as their first choice.]

I pointed out that many other schools have been offering in person education this whole time. If AASD has not been able to do that and hasn’t been able to offer a satisfactory product, maybe they shouldn’t be demanding that parents not get vouchers. How does change happen if people are stuck with AASD?

Kay said that was a difference of opinion. She didn’t think it would have been a wise move with the information that they had to offer 5 days a week in person instruction.

I pointed out that they didn’t even try hybrid. They offered nothing and they did that two weeks before school was supposed to start.

Kay said it was a dynamic situation with changing local factors and that they were following the advice of local health experts. [I took that to be a reference to Appleton Health Officer Kurt Eggebrecht.]

She said no one set out to harm children.

I told her any parent could have told them that virtual school was going to harm their student and that they weren’t going to perform as well as in in-person school. How much consideration did they give to that?

She said it was part of the consideration and that there were a lot of competing factors.

I asked her how much weight they gave to the harm that students were going to experience.

She said it wasn’t realistic to quantify that.

I understood that but at some point they must have realized that kids were going to be harmed but decided that the harm was outweighed by the benefits.

She said she wouldn’t describe it that way.

I suggested it would be a little more concerning if they didn’t do that and did not recognize that children were going to be harmed.

She said that eventually a decision is made and that many, many people weighed in on it. She specifically mentioned local healthcare officials as having weighed in [which again I took to reference Health Officer Eggebrecht].

She mentioned Dane County and that their local health officials prohibited in-person school except for up to grade 2.

I pointed out Appleton didn’t even do that. They were fully virtual across the board.

Kay said Dane County wasn’t allowed to start even K-2 in-person until January.

Kay suggested that people’s responses are politically driven. Dane County is much more liberal so more people accepted their response. Our area is more politically divided so not everyone sees things the same way.

She shared her experiences being a part of focus groups that they held with students at North, West, East, and Central. Some of the kids liked virtual and had opted to stay that way. They felt it prepared them more for college by teaching them time management. The sky wasn’t falling for them.

I told her I didn’t think anybody was saying there should not be a virtual option but the ones who wanted in person school were not given a choice.

Kay said that was the decision made locally and other schools also made that choice. She mentioned Dane County again.

I wasn’t sure people want Appleton to be run like Madison.

Kay said she heard the frustration and shared some of it too. Everyone has been impacted by the pandemic in different ways.

She went back to the focus group. The students were asked what advice they’d give the school board. They said, “Thank the teachers.” She said each focus group was 10-12 kids from each school.

I told her I didn’t know if they would have gotten feedback from the ones who were having a bad time because they would not necessarily have been interested in even giving feedback.

Kay said the students were candid. They discussed the mitigation strategies–masks, distancing, etc–and the students said they were feeling really good about it. The students told them that distancing could be improved at the end of the day during dismissal and within the stairwells. She stressed the students were candid and gave some advice. The focus group participants said that it was challenging for a teacher to do virtual and in-person at the same time.

I thanked her for getting back to me and asked her one last time if she personally thought it was ethical for Ed Ruffolo to tell people that he tried to get his name off the ballot and that he wasn’t going to be campaigning, but to now be holding a secret campaign meeting that the public is not privy to after declining to participate in the League of Women Voters forum which is one of the only ways voters are going to be able to see candidates and hear their answers to question.

She said that was a question for Ed and I should reach out to him. [I have reached out to him, and I would hope actual news organizations have reached out to him as well, but he does not seem to have spoken publicly at this point.]

I asked her if she, personally, would be comfortable doing something like that. Would it feel ethical to her to act that way?

Kay answered that there are times when you think that you would never do something or that your kids would never do something but then you find out otherwise. Sometimes you’re surprised by the things your kids do and not happy with it. She didn’t want to say what she would do if she were Ed Ruffolo. She didn’t want to speculate or predict.