The Appleton Area School District Board of Education met 05/24/2021 and voted to move forward with the survey the Business Services Committee crafted to gather feedback on the proposal to rename Lincoln Elementary.
As outlined by Board member Jim Bowman, the survey offers 5 different naming options instead of just the 1 option of the previous survey and asks the public to use the District’s vision as the criteria for evaluating those options. They will have the opportunity to rank each name on a 5 point scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Jim stated that this scale would result in finding that would give the Board a clearer comparison of the different options.
AASD Chief Financial Officer Greg Hartjes said that the recommended timeline was to open the survey at 8AM on Friday, May 28th, keep it open for 3 weeks, and then close it at 4PM on Friday June 18th. They would notify the community in the same ways they did for the previous survey–through emails to families, posting on the AASD website, posting on the Lincoln Elementary website, and sharing the survey link with local media.
In the last survey they just asked for the respondents’ email addresses and how they were connected to the district. In this new one, they were also recommending asking for the respondents’ names and street addresses because they wanted to limit the responses to only individuals in the 44,000 households that are located within the confines of the Appleton Area School District. They also want to ask the yes or no question “Do you live in the Lincoln attendance area” so that they can separate those answers out and see if they differ from the community responses as a whole.
They were also recommending making the survey more accessible than last time by not simply making it available electronically but also by creating a paper option that could be picked up at the Scullen Leadership Center or mailed out to an address upon request. They will also provide translations as needed.
Board member Deb Truyman made a motion to amend the survey to change the language from “name a different facility after Ron Dunlap” and “name a different facility after Abraham Lincoln” to “recommend naming” so as to not tie the hands of a future Board. This change was approved unanimously.
Board President Kay Eggert, was concerned about the recommended survey. She did not know how it fit into the Renaming Policy given that the committee which had asked for the name change had specifically asked for the school to be renamed “Ronald C. Dunlap Elementary – Home of the Lincoln Lions” but now the survey was asking for the public’s feedback on other naming options not asked for by that committee. She did not know how that data would be used or what the process would be if the Board decided they liked one of the other options more than the one the original committee had asked for.
Deb and Board member Kris Sauter also wondered what would be done with the other name options.
Jim, however, thought the issue had evolved from the original proposal into something that now involved the entire community. He thought they had crafted a process to gather data from the entire community and share it with the entire community. He stated that if he had been biased toward one option before he no longer felt that way and would be happy with any of the options. He felt good about the process and felt it was a way to show what they as a Board believe in and how they bring the community in on this issue and mold consensus. He thought that process was more important than the decision that would eventually be arrived at.
Board member Gary Jahnke thought that the renaming proposal started as a project from a community committee, but once it came before the Board of Education it became more business. He thought the recommended survey questions and the alternative name options fit in with the Board’s governance process. He wanted people to have the opportunity to respond to this survey and generate quality data.
The Board eventually voted to approve the survey process 4-2 with Kay and Deb voting nay. (Board member Barry O’Connor was not present.)
[I think the issue with how survey questions about other naming options fit in with the original renaming request illustrates one of the problems with a person or group asking for a very specific name as opposed to something more general. Perhaps the renaming policy should be changed to at a minimum recommend that groups or individuals who wish to propose a renaming come with a more general request such as, to use this situation as an example, “We ask that Lincoln Elementary be renamed to honor Ronald Dunlap,” instead of, “We ask that Lincoln Elementary be renamed ‘Ronald C. Dunlap Elementary – Home of the Lincoln Lions’” specifically. Maybe throw in a couple different name options as examples and leave the option for community feedback and name recommendations as well.
I do think the procedural concerns were not nearly as problematic as they were viewed as being. It seems to me that if a different option rises to the top through the survey, the Board could deny the requested name change and say “We would be willing to approve such and such a request were it made”. Then the committee could come back to the next Board meeting. The Board could approve a new community feedback process at that meeting–one that could probably be more limited at that point than this survey was–and then two weeks later at the following Board meeting they could approve the new name change. If they decided to name a facility (such as the as yet unnamed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office) instead of renaming a school, they wouldn’t even need to gather community feedback since the policy says they “may” instead of “shall”.]
View full meeting details here: http://go.boarddocs.com/wi/aasd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C2XR4R6924D4
Watch video of meeting here: https://youtu.be/5NXF8QRZPiU
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