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.
I’ve already posted the cliff notes version along with a clarifying update, but here is the full recap of that section of the meeting.
Board President Kay Eggert explained that the topic of renaming Lincoln came before the Board in February. After discussion, they decided to revisit their facilities naming policy because the policy at that time did not address the renaming of facilities. Now, with that policy having been updated, the Board was ready to consider the item again in the context of the newly revised policy.
Deb Truyman opened up the discussion by giving the compelling reasons for retaining the current name of Lincoln Elementary. The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Abraham Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party’s nomination for President he sketched his life. “I was born in February 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia of undistinguished families. My mother died in my 10th year. My father moved from Kentucky to Indiana in my 8th year. It was a wild region and there I grew up of course. When I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow I could read, write, and cypher, but that was all.” Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to obtain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping a store in New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Blackhawk War and later taught himself law. After passing the bar exam, Lincoln became a lawyer and moved to Springfield Illinois. He spent 8 years in the Illinois legislature and rode the circuit of courts for many years. He married Mary Todd. They had 4 boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen Douglas for Senator and gained a national reputation that won him the nomination for President in 1860. As president he not only built the Republican Party into a strong organization, but he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause, and on January 1st 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy. He never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Lincoln won reelection in 1864 and in his planning for peace he was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion. The spirit that guided him was clear in his second inaugural address, “with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in.” Lincoln was assassinated on April 14th, 1865 and with his death the possibility of peace with magnanimity died. She took this information from “Presidents of the United States of America” by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey.
She listed a few of his other accomplishments. He received a patent for a device he invented to keep ships buoyant over shallow areas of water. He contributed to education by signing the Morrill Act which aided in the establishment of agricultural and technical colleges in each state. He signed the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864 which made the Transcontinental Railroad. He signed the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 which resulted in a standardized currency, a network of national banks, and the establishment of a Comptroller of the Currency. Deb stated that, before they considered a request to rename the school, she believed that these were compelling reasons to retain the name of Lincoln Elementary.
A little later in the meeting Barry O’Connor gave the reasons for changing the name. Ron came to Appleton in 1990 with his hesitant spouse and 4th grade daughter. That was 31 years ago to a community with very few black residents, a significant Hmong community, and a history of racial intolerance. It was a leap of faith and courage on the part of him and his family. Ron believed that he could bring an appreciation for diversity to our community. He thought he could help our kids have experiences that would prepare them for their future in a diverse world. Some of our major corporations were also hoping Appleton could become a more comfortable place for needed diverse employees. He and others have had a major impact to make his motto “treat others with respect and dignity” a reality for our community. But there’s a lot more work to do, a goal Abraham Lincoln would have embraced as well. Renaming Lincoln School, Ron Dunlap Elementary School – Home of the Lincoln Lions would be honoring his efforts and celebrating his message for our community and our children for the future. Barry stated that Ron would be honored to share a school name with Lincoln. He thought that would be a great symbol for what our community aspires to be, and he suspected that Abraham Lincoln would be honored to have his name on that school in conjunction with Ron Dunlap.
Ed Ruffolo said that he understood if they approved the request that the next step would be to go through a public discernment process of some kind to gather more public input, such via a referendum or a public hearing. He wanted to know if they were locked in to only considering Lincoln Elementary after Ron Dunlap or if other options arose during that public discernment process could they do something different?
Kay reiterated what the process was which didn’t answer Ed’s question, so he restated it.
He wanted to know if they were limited to only the option of renaming Lincoln School or if they received input from the public that guided them in a different direction would they have to vote no and then go through the whole process again or could they simply change the way they honored Mr. Dunlap through the process that was currently underway.
Kay said that she saw the current process as just regarding the renaming of Lincoln Elementary, but that was not to say there couldn’t be something else done. But right now they were just taking up the potential renaming of Lincoln within the context of the new policy. She acknowledged that it seemed a little cumbersome because some work had already been done before and now they were trying to follow the policy. It was a little hard because they couldn’t do things out of order.
[For what it’s worth, as I read the policy, it seems like it would not inherently need to be as drawn out of a process if they took things in another direction. In the case of renaming a school the policy dictates that the Board “will” gather public input; however, when naming a facility or a part of a building public input “may” be gathered but doesn’t have to be, so if they pivoted to something else it would potentially be a less lengthy process.]
Gary Hartjes said that he believed Ron Dunlap was worthy of having a place named after him, and Gary enthusiastically supported that happening. However, he couldn’t support the renaming of Lincoln Elementary. He said this topic caused him to reflect on what they do as a board. We govern and develop policy and then apply the policy in the interest of promoting student achievement. The consideration of renaming an existing AASD school takes the Board beyond student achievement. It causes reflection and causes them to get input from a variety of sources, and it must always be measured with a sense of immediate and ongoing impact.
He thought they should be mindful of setting a precedent. As he thought about the word “compelling” in their renaming policy, he viewed it as scales. On one side of the scales was the current name and on the other side was the proposed name. The current name has a lot of weight, so a proposed name has to somehow tip that to the point where it overrides the current name. For all the good and worthy things Ron did, Gary didn’t see that overriding the name of Lincoln in this case. He said he did some research and looked up when the school was named back in 1954. There was an article in the Post Crescent and they talked about many of the same things that the Board was talking about now in terms of naming–how important a name was and what the great reasons were to name it after Abraham Lincoln. Gary also noted that, as far as he was aware, there is no other place in Appleton named after Abraham Lincoln. So taking that name off the school bothered him in terms of setting a precedent.
He talked about the fields at Appleton East and North which were named after people from previous generations. He didn’t want to set a precedent where other names could be removed with relative ease by a generation with no connection to the initial name. He didn’t feel there was a reason to move forward with the renaming process.
He did, however, suggest that a new school could be named after Mr. Dunlap or an auditorium or media center. Perhaps even a bridge in Appleton could be named after him seeing that his impact did reach beyond the boundaries of the school system.
Jim Bowman said this was not a comparison between Abraham Lincoln and Ron Dunlap. He thought the criteria was what would help kids, teachers, administrators, and parents to develop a learning environment that is equitable and inclusive. “If one or the other might inspire them, inspire us to move towards greater academic learning, social interactions, emotional competence, that’s the name I would go with.” He said he knew something of Abraham Lincoln and a little about Ron Dunlap and what Ron did for parents, children, and families. If Mr. Dunlap was instrumental in doing that then Jim would see value in renaming the school because he thought that might inspire people to move forward. He said he needed to know more about Ron Dunlap.
Ed said he thought even the Board was conflicted about the best way to move forward. He wondered if it would make sense to send this item back to committee or if there was enough flexibility already. He was trying to imagine if they went through the process and, for example, there was a referendum and the referendum failed, but they still wanted to honor Ron Dunlap, what would the Board be able to do. He wanted to be able to honor him. He was looking for flexibility to balance the different ideas he has heard from the community and the district rather than to be compelled to give a “yes” or “no” on one specific way to honor Mr. Dunlap. He thought that would be important because this was something that a lot of people would have different opinions on.
Deb thought that right now their job was to decide if they were going to consider the request. She thought that, with all the interest in honoring Mr. Dunlap, that if the Board didn’t go forward with the renaming process she was sure there would be other opportunities and other ways to honor him. She was by no means saying he shouldn’t be honored, but she thought there were compelling reasons to not rename the school and that there would be other opportunities to do something should they not go forward with the renaming.
Kay brought them back to the policy. The first step was if they wanted to consider renaming and, if that was the case, then what would the name be. But, in this case there’s already a proposed name there so they were probably merging “them”. [I took “them” to mean the steps of the policy]. First the Board had to decide if they wanted to talk about a renaming and then they had to go through the process of gathering input. Some input had already been gathered, so they had to decide if they wanted more input or different input. This was just the first step. Did the Board want to consider renaming Lincoln Elementary school?
Kris Sauter said that renaming was really an emotional decision and she thought that had come through in much of the feedback that they had received so far. What was challenging was that, in this case, Ron Dunlap is very deserving of recognition, but what’s also challenging is that for some, especially those who’ve lived in this community their entire life, Lincoln School has always been known as Lincoln School so it’s hard to remove that name. That was where she was challenged. She wanted to honor Ron and she thought there were many benefits to showing that they were open to honoring all individuals in the community and that the diversity was very positive. But, she also understood the tradition of Lincoln School and those who were challenged by the possible change.
Barry said that when you go into Lincoln School now there’s a display case honoring Ron and across the hall there’s a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. What better way to make a point as to what our values are as a school district and as a community? He stated that “representative groups” of our diverse community had weighed in in support of the name change. He thought that couldn’t be ignored and that it would send a terrible message to them if the Board wouldn’t even consider the name change. They weren’t deciding to approve the name change–just to consider the name change. He could not support that type of rejection of what seemed like a pretty good idea in his book. He acknowledged it was divided, but he thought the solution that had been proposed (i.e. a combination of names in some way) was a good compromise and a tremendous teaching tool for kids in the future. It’s a symbol and people are watching in the community on both sides of it. He said that people in the Lincoln Elementary schol community seemed to support this and the comments they received from many civic leaders had been very supportive. He couldn’t imagine voting to not even consider the proposal.
Kay said it would obviously be a several step process. What she heard was that Barry was supportive of considering the renaming and carrying the process along.
Barry confirmed that was the case. He said it wasn’t even possible to approve a name change that night. They were simply deciding if they were going to consider the change and if they decided that then did they need to collect more information and were they going to collect that information.
Deb made a motion to give no further consideration to renaming the school because she believed the Board had other business to attend to and, as Gary had said, this was going to set a precedent and she didn’t believe it was in their best interest to consider it at this time.
They then discussed her motion.
Jim thought a discussion of the pros and cons of the name change was healthy. The community was split and he thought both sides needed to be brought out in a conversation. He said the Board needed to consider this.
Gary thought they should look for middle ground. Everyone on this board believed Ron was worthy of being honored in some way. In the letters they received regarding the change he didn’t see much specifically about the removal of the name Lincoln. Regardless of who they wanted to honor, he didn’t think the name Lincoln name should be removed. Everyone in the city would say they should honor Ron, but the issue right now was removing Lincoln.
Kris thought the issue was worthy of further conversation.
The motion failed 2-5 with only Deb Truyman and Gary Jahnke voting in favor of not considering the name change further.
They then voted on a new motion to approve continuing the name change process. That motion passed 5-2 with Kay Eggert, Jim Bowman, Barry O’Connor, Ed Ruffolo, and Kris Sauter voting in favor.
Having voted to consider the name change, they then moved onto the next step in the process which was that the Board, in conjunction with the Superintendent, would develop a process to gather community feedback on the request.
Kay said that some work had been done in that regard already. Did the Board want additional information? Did they want to hold a public hearing? What did they want to do?
Deb wanted to initiate a process where the Board with Clara Kopplinger’s help conducted a survey. She said that last time they put it on the district’s website, but she said there were a lot of community members that didn’t know to look on the district website. She said it had been posted in the newspaper but that wasn’t done right away. She thought that they would almost have to put it on social media to get a fuller group of people replying. She said that last time the survey was open to anyone, and she wondered if they should limit the next survey to residents of the school district. She said it was easy enough for a teacher to tell their class that they had 5 minutes to go take a survey and click yes. She worried about whether they were getting total community feedback. She suggested that feedback should be limited to residents of the school district who were 18 years or older so that the Board could truly hear what the taxpaying community members had to say.
Barry thought they had already collected a considerable amount of input. He was not in favor of a referendum because that would set an enormous precedent for future questions. He said they wanted to hear what people had to say and they had done that and he thought they had a good sense of community opinion. He thought that as board representatives of the community, they make the decisions–that’s why they are representatives and have been given that authority. He thought they had already collected a lot of information but was open to allowing people to contribute ideas between that Board of Education meeting and the next Board of Education meeting. He agreed that it should probably be from people who are in the community. He didn’t know if kids had expressed an opinion. He wondered if those who were a part of the Lincoln community should have more of a say. He said that having more input was welcome, but he thought at the next meeting they should make a decision on the renaming request.
Deb didn’t think that fewer than 600 replies was representative of the community as a whole and parameters were not set at the time the previous feedback was gathered. She thought the question could be similar and it could be posted on the district website as before, but she wanted it to be publicized to many different sources. She said she was still getting phone calls from people wondering what was going on and asking if it was too late to voice their opinion. That made her think a lot of people didn’t know about it the first time. She wanted a new survey with parameters similar to the parameters set for when people gave feedback on proposed curricula. She wanted them to fill out their name and address in order to ensure that they were residents of the district. That would be valid data.
Kay said that given they hadn’t done this before it was hard to decide on the spot what process they should use. The policy stated “in conjunction with the Superintendent” so she asked Superintendent Baseman if she had any thoughts.
Superintendent Baseman said that she was hearing that Deb wanted a process similar to the one they use to get public feedback on proposed curricula where they have to enter their name and address. She thought that verifying age would be more difficult. She asked for thoughts from other Board members.
Kay wanted to know if it should be limited to just current residents.
Deb said she gave her thoughts. She wasn’t saying they were totally right but she thought feedback should be limited to people who were taxpayers and, therefore, had some skin in the game.
Jim said he had gotten a lot of input verbally and through email. Both had been helpful. He would be satisfied if the Board was to announce that they were going to proceed with a final vote on the renaming in 2 weeks and that anyone who wanted to make their point of view known should do so then. He thought putting a notice in the Post Crescent would flush out anyone who felt strongly about it and had anything to say. That would be adequate for him.
Deb asked how they would tally responses. She wasn’t saying it had to be a majority rule decision but she wondered if they would keep track of who was in favor and who was against.
Jim thought each of them would process the input in their own way. He thought that was what the public expected them to do. There are times when data is collected from a large population and he did want to see a structured approach with a breakdown of age and other criteria, but on this issue most people were going to come down on one side or the other. He didn’t see the need for a structured survey for this particular question.
Kris wondered how much time they would need to do a survey.
Superintendent Baseman said the timing issue would be less with the development of the survey and more with the publicizing of the survey and making sure that it reached the population they were seeking input from.
Kay asked if they were settling on written feedback rather than a community forum.
Ed said that whatever name or decision they come to is one that they are going to have to live with for a long time, so he didn’t see the value in making a speedy decision. He felt that what they were trying to do at that moment was detailed committee work. He wanted to see the item referred to an appropriate committee to work with Superintendent Baseman and the appropriate staff to come up with a recommendation for the best approach to get public feedback. The Board could then review, approve, or modify that recommendation, and once that process was known they could proceed forward.
He didn’t see the value in resolving this in the next two weeks. If it took the next two months, it took the next two months. This was a long term decision and worthy of a bit of time to consider. “That certainly was the basis of my vote to consider it–not to know that we were going to have it resolved in two weeks. I’m not comfortable with that.”
Kay asked what committee it would go to.
Superintendent Basmany suggested the Policy Review Committee.
Deb asked if they could form an ad hoc committee for this one specific purpose.
Barry suggested that stretching this out wasn’t going to make it easier or clearer. He said the news media was covering this meeting for this particular question and it would be in the newspaper and on TV. He suggested that tonight they could say that there would be a survey,tell people where it would be posted, and encourage people to provide input.
He said, when you do surveys of any kind, it’s hard to say you’re a representative sample of anything. It was not going to be a quality survey regardless of how they did it. They already have a list of people who have submitted feedback on the issue and he assumed they didn’t need to hear from them again. But people who haven’t given feedback at this point would have an opportunity to comment. He wondered about the identification issue and whether the first 584 respondents had to identify themselves to answer those question.
Greg Hartjes said they had to provide their email address and were asked if they were a student, former student, staff member, former staff member, parent, former parent, or a community member.
Barry asked if there would be a way to find out if a respondent had given answers on both surveys. He also wondered what Greg’s thoughts were on the survey information in terms of the quality of it.
Greg said he thought they did this process already. At the February 1st board meeting this came up. They did a press release. They also sent out a link to the survey to all the AASD families. They had 584 who responded to it at that time and received additional emails, phone calls, and letters. They’ve done it once but certainly can do it again. They would have to compare emails if they wanted to make sure that a voice wasn’t heard twice. They do have the emails from the 584 individuals that responded the first time.
Barry personally thought they had enough input. Giving people an opportunity to do it again was fine, but he didn’t want to burden someone with analyzing another extensive survey.
Kris wondered what other board members thought about the possibility of holding a hearing.
Deb thought it was hard for people to get out and a forum would be difficult. She mentioned some people not having the capability. [I think she was referencing the technological ability.]
She referred back to the policy and said that if the Board votes to accept the request the Board will develop and approve a process for notifying the community. If they don’t do this over again they would not be following their own policy. She also did not think that 584 responses represented the whole community. She said some of the responses came from younger students and she wondered if they really understood. Did they really know what they were saying or have the maturity to say that a name change was a good decision? She wanted some kind of age parameter around the feedback.
Barry asked Greg if he thought many of the responses were from children in the first survey.
Greg thought that fewer than 5 gave from students [I checked with him after the fact, and the total number of current students who responded was 6.]. They didn’t ask for them to give their grade. His thought was that there were very few students under the Junior or Senior level who responded.
[He gave some numbers during the meeting, but he told me after the fact that he grabbed his notes quickly and misread some of them. I confirmed with him afterwards what the numbers were.
6 current AASD students
121 former AASD students
179 current parents
64 former parents
49 current AASD staff members
48 former staff members
117 Community members.
He also confirmed for me that they did not know which of these respondents were actually residents in the district vs, for example, being staff who lived outside the district, parents who open enrolled their children into AASD, or former students/parents/community members who no longer lived in the district’s boundaries.]
Jim said he would benefit from a second look at the data because it had been a while for him. He was pleased they collected it.
Superintendent Baseman said that another possible committee was the Business Services Committee. They had experience with the Paul Engen Field and they’ve typically been the standing committee that has worked with renaming facilities other than schools. She checked with Greg to see if they could pull that group together to develop a format for reporting the survey while simultaneously putting forward another opportunity that would make sure they weren’t getting double responses from the same individuals. She said they could also potentially add the grade level of the students as an additional question.
Greg confirmed they could do that. He said the next Business Services Meeting wasn’t scheduled until May 25 the day after the May 24th Board of Education meeting.
Superintendent Baseman said they could call a special meeting.
Kay specifically said that they were not going to take an official vote on their action and it was a little confusing to me whether they were not going to be collecting any data until the Business Services Committee met and the Board of Education voted on their recommendation, but I did confirm with Clara Kopplinger that the Business Services Committee will be meeting 05/14/2021 at 12:30PM and they will creating a recommendation regarding a process and parameters for a survey which the Board will then take under consideration at the Board of Education meeting on 05/24/2021.
View full meeting details here: http://go.boarddocs.com/wi/aasd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C2PSAT71C788
View full meeting video here: https://youtu.be/octkI5ldEoE
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