AASD Board Of Education Votes To Consider A Name Change For Lincoln Elementary

On 05/10/2021 the Appleton Area School District Board of Education took up the issue of renaming Lincoln Elementary as Ronald C. Dunlap Elementary – Home of the Lincoln Lions.

As expected, they voted 5-2 to consider the name change. This was not a vote to approve the name change; it was simply a vote to consider a name change.

The process of a name change as laid out in the new 940 Board policy is as follows:

1. A written request shall be submitted to the School Board during a regular school board meeting.
   1. This request can come from the superintendent, a board member, a school-initiating entity (e.g., PTA, students, staff members, alumni) or residents of the District.
   2. The request shall include a statement of the reason for the request.
2. The School Board will decide by majority vote whether to proceed with the request, seek further review, or deny the request.
3. If the School board votes to accept the request, the Board, in conjunction with the Superintendent will develop, and the Board will approve, a process for notifying the community and gathering community input/feedback on the request.
4. Considering the community’s input, the Board may decide to:
   1. Retain the original name; or
   2. Accept the request to rename by either
      1. Engaging in a process to solicit proposals for a new name.
      2. Accepting an existing proposal for a new name.
5. If a new name is recommended for a School or Other Major District Facility, that name should meet the criteria and follow the procedures referenced above.”

So, essentially, the Board carried out step two of their process last night. That means they needed to move on to step three–creating a process for notifying the community and gathering input/feedback on the request. And that is the point at which things became somewhat confusing. For step two they held an official vote to accept the proposal to consider a name change, and that motion is reflected in the meeting minutes.

Exactly what they decided to do for step 3 is somewhat up in the air because there was no formal motion or vote.

Deb Truyman wanted a more rigorous process of collecting public feedback, one with more clearly laid out parameters for whose feedback was being sought and that both particularly focused on getting comments from residents 18 and older in the AASD area and more actively sought out feedback from people who are not connected to schools (i.e. not just staff, parents, and students).

Barry O’Connor, on the other hand, thought the information they collected in the survey that went out in February was sufficient, that there was no particular need to gather more input, and that they should vote on whether to approve the name change at the next Board of Education meeting on 05/24/2021.

Ed Ruffolo did not feel it was appropriate to rush the process. He wanted to see the issue of creating a community feedback process referred to a committee for them to come up with some recommendations to present to the Board. He was not comfortable resolving the issue in two weeks and thought that if it took two months it took two months.

Eventually, it seemed that it was decided that the Board did want to gather more feedback (as Deb pointed out, the policy requires them to) and that they planned to do it by means of a survey. They seemed to not want to gather feedback from people who already gave feedback back in February and some mention was made of coming up with a process to separate and throw out feedback from people who already gave it back in February. [I am curious if legally they would be allowed to do that. It seems like a government board setting up a process that calls for public feedback but then throwing out the feedback of people who submitted comments previously under a different process guided by different procedures might be frowned upon by the courts. At a minimum, it sounds like something they ought to run past a lawyer.]

There was discussion of having the Business Services Committee hold a special meeting to in some way work on this survey, but it wasn’t clear to me whether that committee would be creating a survey process and parameters or if they would just be figuring out how to process survey results that they have already received. It is not clear to me if the survey will be coming out prior to the next Board of Education meeting on 05/24/2021 or only after the Board of Education has met again and officially approved a survey process. [Given the fact that this renaming process started well before policy 940 was updated to accommodate the renaming of schools and they are now trying to force a process that has already been underway into a policy that was only approved two weeks ago, it appears to be getting messy and it doesn’t seem like a bad idea for them to bring a lawyer in to advise them and make sure that they are carrying out their policy in an appropriate and above board manner.]

All of that is to say, I don’t know when the survey will be coming out or who will be allowed to fill it out or when the Board will be voting on whether to approve a name change. I don’t *think* that a final vote on the Lincoln Elementary name change is going to happen at the next Board of Education meeting on 05/24/2021, but I’m not *positive*. Because the Board of Education chose to not vote on this issue or clearly state what they were planning to do the public can’t be entirely certain.

I am following up with the District administrative team and will certainly update everyone when I become aware of a survey being posted. Until then, whether you’re in favor of the name change or opposed, if you want to make sure that your voice is heard on this issue you should consider emailing the Board of Education members. They can be reached here: AASDBoard@aasd.k12.wi.us.

View full meeting details here: http://go.boarddocs.com/wi/aasd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C2R5PZ73EEF9

View full meeting video here: https://youtu.be/octkI5ldEoE