The Appleton Area School District Board of Education met 04/12/2021
Although not up for a vote, the board did discuss the proposed changes to the school facility naming policy. Updating this policy to include guidelines on renaming facilities is a precursor to removing the name Lincoln Elementary from that school’s building so it can be renamed Ronald C. Dunlap Elementary – Home Of The Lincoln Lions.
Kay Eggert reviewed the highlights. The Board of Education has the final authority over the naming of any district facility. The policy outlines the criteria for evaluating proposed names and includes additional considerations if the proposed name is that of an individual. The draft policy is divided into four sections: (1) Naming School Buildings, (2) Naming Major Facilities Other Than School Buildings, which includes reference to the district’s sponsorship policy, (3) Naming Other Areas Within a School or Within a District Facility, and (4) Renaming Facilities.
Jim Clemons thought that the policy should include something about removing a name from an existing school and suggested that if the Board of Education decides that a request to remove a name has merit that it should then move to a city-wide referendum. He thought the referendum requirement should only apply to school buildings and not facilities or areas within a facility.
Kay Eggert said that the policy had a process for renaming. It needed to be a written request from the superintendent, a board member, a school, or residents of the district. The request had to state the reason. Then the board would have a discussion to decide by majority vote on the renaming request. Then the request would be referred to the Superintendent for review to gather feedback and then submit a recommendation to the Board. Kay wondered if that would be sufficient feedback as opposed to a city referendum. She reiterated that it was a two step process. First the board would need to entertain the idea of considering a renaming. Then, if they think the renaming request has merit, the Superintendent would develop a process.
Jim Clemons said his point was that if a renaming request gets to the point that the Board thinks it has merit he wanted them to consider having a city-wide referendum just regarding the removal of a name.
Kay asked how he would have a city wide referendum.
Jim Clemons answered that if it got to the point where the Board wanted to remove a name they would have either a binding or advisory referendum during the next election.
Barry O’Connor asked Jim if he would like to have a referendum when they name any school or facility?
Jim Clemons reiterated that the only thing he wanted a referendum for would be if they should remove a name from a school. The referendum would be strictly if they want to strip a name from a school building because when they name a school it’s expected that it will keep that name forever.
Barry said he didn’t think they’re different. He thought the school board was elected to make these decisions.
Jim Clemons pointed out that the difference is that a School Board in the past already made a decision to name something. He said that if a new building is built, the Board should go ahead and name it, but he thought the community should have input on renaming a school.
Barry had a long pause then did not respond to Jim Clemon’s point, choosing instead to move on instead to a statement Deb Truyman had made in the middle of the back and forth about a potential referendum.
Deb had expressed dissatisfaction with the way the renaming section of the policy called for the Superintendent to solicit community input while other parts of the policy called for the Board toeh solicit community input. She wondered why those sections varied. Why wouldn’t the Board develop a process for community input? She said they were representing the community as board members and she wanted this to stay in the Board’s hands as much as possible.
Barry wondered if it was different if they had the Superintendent organize the input vs the board organizing it.
Deb said she circled several places in the policy (under Naming School Buildings and Naming Major Facilities) where it says “the Board may solicit community input” But in the Renaming Facilities it why did it say the superintendent would solicit input? The policy is not consistent. She liked Jim Clemon’s idea of a referendum, and stated that renaming a school was a big deal.
Gary Jahnke pointed out that in their most recent Coherent Governance training session they talked about linkages with the community. Having the Board handle public input would be consistent with that.
Kay said that what she was hearing was that if the Board votes to accept a request to rename then the Board will develop a process–not the Superintendent.
Deb confirmed that is what she would suggest–the Board will develop a process for gathering community input just as it says under the other two sections. She also wondered, if they were working on Coherent Governance, why were they spending their time on this issue now.
Kay said that they had indicated that they wanted to update the naming policy. They didn’t have a renaming policy. This [I took “this” to be the push to rename Lincoln Elementary] was being done in parallel outside in the community. She didn’t believe any of the work in the policy would go to go to waste because it’s not a duplicate with something in Coherent Governance,
Jim Bowman was opposed to requiring a referendum to strip a name from a school. He wanted to give future Boards flexibility on how they gather community input. There might be times they want to do a referendum but there might be other times where they might not. He didn’t want to pin themselves down.
Jim Clemons said that a referendum would take place after the Board decided if a request had merit. It wouldn’t preclude anyone from making requests.
Kay said they wanted to provide guidelines for a process without being too regimented. But she was hearing from two members that including the Superintendent in the community input gathering should be removed.
Gary Jahnke agreed with Jim Bowman. He would like to see some changes in the draft, but he wanted it to give some leeway and allow them to gather community input as they saw appropriate at the time.
Barry wasn’t sure what Gary was proposing in terms of the Superintendent’s role in gathering input as well as whether there should be a referendum
Gary said that at the last Coherent Governance meeting they talked about it being the Board’s role to gather community input–not the Superintendent’s. There were districts that have a Communications Committee. Coherent Governance talked about communication into the community being Board driven not Superintendent driven.
Barry said that generally the comments would come into a central location in the district [which I took to suggesting that if it was all going to go to the administration’s office then the Superintendent might as well handle it]. He said they were going to get a bunch of input from various places.
Gary said at the Coherent Governance session they talked about town halls and various ways to gather input beyond a survey. Being Board driven was the big difference here.
Kris Sauter spoke on Gary’s point about the communication linkages. She thought that when they talked about those [in the Coherent Governance session] they were smaller groups of people. She thought they may want to broaden the scope for a name change and try to solicit larger groups.
Gary said they may find that a referendum is the way to go.
Someone mentioned that some policies had a public hearing as a way to do that.
Kay said they wanted public input to go beyond the Board and tried to work that into the policy.
Jim Clemons said he thought they were all saying the same thing. The more options they have the better regarding seeking input.
Deb said that what it came down to for her was that instead of saying the Superintendent would develop a process that should be left in the nads of the Board. But community linkages could take a lot of forms. They can be big groups. When the Board and the Leadership Team get in their lanes, the Superintendent is going to send out a lot of pulse surveys to parents and such, but Deb thought it would be better if the Board was the one to get input on something like a school name change.
Kay said the Policy Review Committee was going to meet again on Thursday, 04/15/2021.
Kris wanted to know if they went back to committee would they be looking to keep the opportunity for public input general, or were some Board members looking for specific methods of public input.
Jim Clemons said that, ideally, he would personally like to see a referendum required to remove the name of a school. But he understood the nature of Boards.
Gary was good with leaving the process open so that it could be different depending on the year.
[Personally, I would have liked to have seen a much more in depth discussion about what is a compelling reason to strip a name from a school. First off, it’s something that just hasn’t been done in Appleton before and would be highly irregular. But, more than that, these are community institutions that ideally connect people throughout the community and across time. Removing a name from a school is, inherently, going to result in some of those community bonds being cut. I would have liked to have seen some sort of acknowledgement from the Board members about that reality, but outside of Jim Clemons (who will be leaving the Board before this is voted on) and Deb Truyman, I did not see a recognition of that fact.
Beyond that, if a school is named after a particular person whom previous generations went out of their way to honor, stripping that name should carry even greater weight and be done extremely cautiously. It is not unreasonable to lay out some parameters around that decision even if that means future Boards won’t have as much flexibility as the current Board thinks they ought to. Laying out clearer guidelines as to under what circumstances it is appropriate to remove a person’s name from a school building is a way of saying, “We take past generations seriously. We take ourselves seriously. And we expect future generations to take us and past generations seriously and not needlessly remove the things we found important to honor.”]
View the full 04/12/2021 Board of Education meeting here: https://youtu.be/lRnp5vueza0
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