County Line sponsored a forum Monday for the three Norwalk-Ontario-Wilton School Board candidates: challenger Anna Allison and incumbents Matt Muellenberg and Cari Keith.
Alan Szepi, who served as the district’s superintendent from 1977 to 2005, moderated the event.
An audience member drew four questions from a bucket of about 20-30 questions; Szepi then posed those selections to the candidates. The audience also had a chance to ask questions afterward.
A transcript of the forum follows. It has been edited for clarity and length. To watch a video of the forum, go to the County Line’s Facebook page at facebook.com/kickapoovalleypress.
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Forum moderator Alan Szepi: Explain how understanding and acknowledging our past mistakes as a nation is a good thing.
Candidate Cari Keith: I think it’s critical that we examine the mistakes from the past and learn from them. We do not want to repeat things like the world wars, the things that led to that. Just the history of mistreatment of people in the history of the whole world, not just the United States, but everywhere … And just to look hard at what came of that. Did the world come out to a better place because of that? I think not in many cases. Simply, yes, I do believe it’s very important, and I think it’s important for our students to have the opportunity to look and to study and to research.
Candidate Anna Allison: We do need to learn from our mistakes, and people have made mistakes in other countries before they happened in the United States. One of the reasons that the United States became a nation is because of all that was going on in England. They had a national church, and they came here for freedom. The Constitution was created out of some of the mistakes that have been made across the world in other countries and things they were going through at that time. There’s things we can study from ancient cultures that work and didn’t work, and I think the United States, when it became a nation in 1776, took the best and put them together into the Constitution.
Candidate Matt Muellenberg: Certainly, I guess the first words that came to my mind were “continuous improvement”; always be in the continuous-improvement mindset whether it’s at the school or whether it’s at your job. And, yes, look back over time and what mistakes we’ve made as a nation and as a world and as human beings, right? We all have room to improve. Our forefathers did, we do, and we always will. It’s always looking at how we can continuously improve and make society a better place to live in and work together.
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Forum moderator Alan Szepi: How would you describe our school district to a new family considering moving to the area?
Candidate Cari Keith: The best ever. We have so much to offer to any student. To the students, to the families — it’s an extraordinary place. We have a staff that is committed, we have administrators who frankly are brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. They’re problem solvers. They have goals and they stay the course. I cannot say enough about all the teachers and staff. And that’s what I would say to somebody. We’re a school with visions. For us, good enough is not good enough. We want to go way beyond that, and we want to improve constantly what we can give to all the children in our district.
Candidate Anna Allison: I believe Brookwood is the best of the schools in this area and especially in some other areas in the United States. It has not adopted the … policies that all the ones in this area have adopted, and I think that’s a good thing. The biggest majority of the teachers are very fine and dedicated to teaching. But there are certain things that are in the real curriculum that haven’t been approved … Two or three do teach things that come under hidden teaching methods/pedagogies like SEL (social and emotional learning) … and CRT, which teachers will teach on their own. I had some complaints from some parents and some students. I’m like a grandma to a lot of people in these towns, and people will tell me things that they won’t tell their parents because if they tell their parents, they’re afraid the parents will get mad and tell the teachers and tell the school boards. We all know that from being a kid what intimidates us. I would recommend them to come. If you have to move to this area, it’s better than any other school in this area.
Candidate Matt Muellenberg: I actually probably wouldn’t describe it to them, I wouldn’t tell it to them, I’d show it to them, personally. I’d invite them over to the house. I have four kids in the district today, and, boy, I’m pretty proud of them. Like most kids in the district, they excel at certain things, they struggle at a lot of things, not one of them is the same. Some are athletes, some are very smart. I’d start with inviting them over to dinner, and I’d take them around. Take them to the Ontario area and some of the great resources we have there, like Wildcat Mountain. I’d take them to the park there. I’d take them to Norwalk and ride the bike trail. I’d take them to Wilton and see the great establishments there, the businesses. I say that because the school is more than a brick building there up on the hill. It’s the community. We’d do a show-and-tell day, and that’s how I’d describe it to them. I think I’d win them over.
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Forum moderator Alan Szepi: We have a well-educated, caring and hardworking staff at the Norwalk-Ontario-Wilton School District. The cost of living continues to increase. How will you work to retain the staff?
Candidate Cari Keith: That’s a good question. I think what we have to do — I mean, of course, continually, as we have the funds — is to increase salaries. But in talking to teachers, there’s a lot more that’s important to them than money. Money is nice. But if they’re in a place they don’t want to be, if they’re in a place where people are not getting along, where they’re not respected or they’re not listened to, no amount of money is going to make people want to stay there. So we can offer all of those things, which I believe we absolutely do. The whole concept of team collaboration drives everything that goes on in this school, with, of course, the bottom line, is this good for the kids?
Candidate Anna Allison: I would encourage the connection between students and the parents and the teachers. I think the three of them together make a good team. I believe it’s fun giving awards to kids, and kids giving awards to teachers. And they’re also even giving awards to parents. And it’s like Cari said, it’s not just money that keeps people doing what they want to do. I think transparency is important. I think being able to go to the superintendent and talking problems out with the superintendent, which I think we have a great superintendent there now. I think just getting involved in the communities that serve our district, like Matt said, show and tell, that’s a wonderful idea. Not only would I show them to town, I would take them to classrooms unannounced so the teachers wouldn’t even be aware someone is coming that day without appointments. And if the teacher is a good teacher, you would be able to tell what they’re teaching. A lot of people worry about politics. A good teacher, you should be able to teach without them knowing what party or if you believe in God or if you didn’t believe in this or that. They shouldn’t be able to tell what the teacher actually believes. Teaching is not just saying what we believe. It’s teaching the real history. Sometimes the history is uncomfortable, and we don’t like to deal with it, like past mistakes like we talked about before. I think continual improvement is important too.
Candidate Matt Muellenberg: Certainly it’s one of the biggest issues we have faced, not only in our school, but in every school in the state and in the country. Even in my six years on the board thus far, six years ago, you’d have an opening for a teaching position, and it was nothing to get a dozen to 15-20 applicants. You picked them to see which one you wanted to interview, and you felt good about the process. It seems like this last year or two years, it’s been a struggle to get two or three applicants for any position. It’s not just looking internally; it’s one district versus another. You have to watch what is Cashton doing, what is Royall doing, what are they doing for their teachers, because it’s only a matter of time, and you can’t blame a teacher for jumping into the next school district to get better compensation. So, it is important. There’s certainly a lot of legislation and state-mandated policy on what you can and can’t do with compensation. We look at that as a board very seriously and try to do every year as much as we can for the teachers. It’s more than just pay; it’s benefits, health insurance. We’re pretty fortunate not to have had much of an increase in the last three or four years that I can remember, but that’s not going to last. Everybody knows healthcare keeps going up. It’s a major concern. I really support, Cari, what you said. There’s no reason we should have the teachers we do now. And why do we? We have some very dedicated community teachers; many of them have kids of their own in the school district. What keeps them coming in when they know they could go over to Cashton or Royall for extra payroll? It’s because I think we do have this tremendous atmosphere at school and collaboration. It’s quite exciting hearing updates from our high school principal Mrs. Funk and all the new collaborations we see. The science teacher working with the home ec. teacher. Ag teachers working with the theatre team. I know the students see it, and they’re excited to see everyone working toward the same goals, and that’s the type of thing that keeps teachers here, but that’s not going to last forever either. We do have to find ways to get them compensated.
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Forum moderator Alan Szepi: Explain your work background and how your background experience will make you a qualified board member?
Candidate Cari Keith: I have a long history in the N-O-W School District, 30 years’ worth of actual involvement. I worked in the reading room at school for 17 years. I’ve been on the board for three years. Both of our sons went all through the school here. I guess I’ve seen the school from a lot of different angles. I tell you, it has made me more and more passionate about education .… What I love about our board is that every single member brings something very specific, very, very valuable. Matt, who’s an accountant, for heaven’s sakes, he knows the money stuff. Justin just knows everything: he has a mind as sharp as a tack. He’s a good thinker. I could go on. Every single board member brings something wonderful. This is a hard question because your perception of yourself is different from other people’s perception … One thing prior to my long school experience, I actually was a psychotherapist — a group therapist, as a matter of fact. And I do bring some of those skills. Once you know that, you don’t forget that. I think I bring the ability to work with a group.
Candidate Anna Allison: My background is varied. First thing I did out of high school was go to a Bible college. I wanted to be a missionary. Then I got married, and my husband died. Then I ended up going to Milton College in Milton, Wis., which closed down when I was there. I was in my third year. I started out with special-ed. secondary, and I did a training at a junior high school …. I switched over to psych/soc. I was in journalism club there, and I was in journalism in high school. In high school, I was in the debate club. And one of the lessons I learned there was to take the opposing view that you hold yourself right at that time. They would assign you to debate the opposite view we held. I learned communication skills that way. Most of my jobs have been in nursing and taking care of people. I’m a people person. I just naturally love people. I smile a lot. I’ve been told I’ve been hired for this job in a photography studio because I was smiling the whole time during the interview. I didn’t know that I was. Then I had to hire somebody that was a team member at the same studio in the telemarketing market. She was a minority in all three ways: she was black, she was gay, she was a female. And they said why would you hire her, somebody asked. I said, because she is the most qualified person to hold the job. And we got No. 1 in the area because of her job. I like kids. I don’t have any grandchildren of my own, but I get called grandma or auntie or something by a lot of kids. I’m a perpetual learner. I’m a perpetual researcher. I think I’m a perpetual student. I learn in all different areas. I like reading. You got to come to my house; I probably have a lot of library full of books; it’s got more books in there than the school does. There’s some things I disagree with, but I always research. I think that’s kind of what keeps me young is that I’m always researching …. I also had a class at Blackhawk Tech on transactional analysis, and that stayed with me all my life. And body language. I also took nursing school, but I had a son who had problems … so I had to quit the nursing. I gave it up for my son.
Candidate Matt Muellenberg: I’m a Brookwood graduate from ’99, so I’m from the area and I know the community and I know the great things that were in the school from the past. I went on to college and got a degree in accounting and finance and work in the trade at Organic Valley, now for 19 years. (Pointing to his work hat with the Organic Valley label, Muellenberg said), some are always wondering why this guy always wears a hat. It’s my work hat, and, by golly, I take pride in working there, just like I take pride in graduating from Brookwood and from UW-La Crosse. And I’m going to wear the hat. I hope all of our graduates have that same pride. The school board, it’s a line of business, really: the personnel pieces, the policy pieces, the day-in-day-day-out business. There’s a lot of meetings where we’re covering a lot of business and balancing budgets. It’s certainly one of my strengths, but I’m not saying I’m perfect. I agree with Cari, right, so when I get too into the numbers and can’t see past something, we got a pretty good team, with the rest of the board pitching in and explaining why sometimes we need to take risks. I really appreciate that. I coached baseball as an assistant a couple years back in the early 2000s. I help out at Royal Rangers, a Christian-based education program on Wednesday nights for the young boys in the community. My son is part of it. Rob Friske helps with that. I really enjoy that, and I think that helps me relate sometimes with the kids and the teachers, whether it’s behavioral challenges. I can say I’ve been there, and I can understand. I feel I have a pretty even-keeled personality, even at work also, being a manager of people for 10–12 years now. You kind of learn to relax and get all the information before jumping to a conclusion. That’s probably one of my strong suits as well. You’re not going to see me jumping to conclusions before having all the facts.
Audience questions
Brookwood vocal music teacher Hunter Evenson: My question for you three is very straightforward. I feel that to make a well-rounded student at the school, they’ve got to be involved in terms of extracurriculars, whether it’s sports, music or organizations. What are your thoughts on keeping those extracurriculars organizations around for students to take part in?
Candidate Cari Keith: I think it’s absolutely critical that we do that. Besides turning out students who have skills, we want to turn students who are well-rounded, who have had an opportunity to excel in something, and I think extracurriculars offer that perhaps. Maybe kids have had to struggle academically, but they’re a great football player, or they’re a great trombone, or they’re a great actor. And all of those places give kids a place to shine. That will affect their lives, and if they have that kind of success. I’m all for it.
Candidate Anna Allison: I think extracurricular activities are important. Like I said, I liked debate club and I liked home ec. club. When I was in high school, I liked different activities we had. When I was in college, it helps your self-confidence like everybody says. Some people can’t do things just by reading a book; some people have to be hands-on and do things, and I think extracurricular activities help you figure out things. I can’t sing. I can’t sing in the choir. I can’t carry a tune. But I know a lot of people can, and it gives them self-confidence. And people will say things to them that are positive, and it helps you sometimes with a job skill. It’s just something rather than just go there and book learn, it’s just a different way, like you said, well-rounded.
Candidate Matt Muellenberg: It’s critical to social skills. It’s such a big part of life: networking, having connections with other people. The more things we can offer that will allow our students to interact with each other, the better. Friendships will be with them for the rest of their life. It will set them up for when they leave, graduate and move on to whatever endeavor they’re doing, they’ll have that much more self-confidence. It’s very, very critical; I’m also pretty proud with what we’ve been able to have the past six to 10 years. We have the new trap club, we have the chess club now, and a handful of other ones that are fairly new. The longtime, existing ones are still around and going strong. I think we do pretty well at school. There’s always room for improvement, as I said earlier.
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Sharon Karis of Norwalk: I have two children who graduated from Brookwood who I’m very proud of, and I have two granddaughters who are in the school down there now. I love the school district, and I have heard that you have a vision for the future. I’d like to know what you would change or what you would add to the district, whether it’s something small or something on a large scale.
Board member Cari Keith: Visions — the thing is we have had them on so many levels. I could talk about them, but some of them by themselves would sound very small. I think the vision that everybody shares at the school is this desire to instill an extraordinary sense of kindness and caring in our students, in each other. And we are well on our way to that.
Back when I first started working here, right at the beginning I was just impressed with the teachers going so overboard, so beyond what they needed to do for the children. And children who needed something special, whatever it was, the teachers were there to supply. And then go to the playground and watch the kids playing with each other. Now, granted we had some bullying and that sort of thing. But generally, time after time I would see kids just be so incredibly kind to each other.
A child had some physical difficulty. At recess, they’d have two or three other kids helping him get back into the school. This is not uncommon.
Maybe it’s not a big world of change. Well, it is a world-changing thing, isn’t it? We can make the world a kinder place. That’s huge.
We have some visions in terms of the things we want to do more and more of. Our vocational technology program is growing by leaps and bounds. And there’s still more and more of how that’s going to develop. In this community, not everybody is going to go college. Well, in any community not everybody is going to go to college. And we have a wonderful vision. We want to have our kids have an opportunity to experience here to prepare them not just for college, but if they go to the trades, whatever. That program, our vision for that program, is really huge.
Candidate Anna Allison: I agree with Cari about the kindness. I think we all should be kind to each other and we all should accept each other for the way we are, even if we disagree. Like if there’s a problem, attack the problem, not the person. I’m a perpetual learner, I would like students to still be excited about learning and not just learn the bare minimum to get by so they can pass the test. I would like to see their scores to go up on the ACTs and a few things. The last couple months I’ve been donating books to the library, and I think next month I’ll be donating children’s books instead of adult books. I think it’s important for people to learn about everything, well-rounded learning, not just one topic. It will help them when they go out to a job. I also agree about vocational training, training people with special needs, even people with better, smarter than the rest of the kids to help them if they want to go to college, to help people with skills. Even farming, and I know there’s some of that there, but I think there could be improvement. That we will be a society that each person is a part of. It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well, not just to get by.
Candidate Matt Muellenberg: First, I feel you have to look at what areas are our biggest risks moving forward, and we need to address those to make sure we, one, maintain, and, two, improve as time goes on. Certainly, staff we already talked tonight. That’s getting to be a risk; we find it harder and harder to retain the such great staff that we have today. We are very fortunate, but we cannot be naïve and think it’s always going to work, so we need to be mindful there.
Probably the biggest challenge the school is facing is declining enrollment. For the last 8–10 years, we have had roughly on average 10 fewer kids in the kindergarten class coming in as compared with the graduating senior class. There was a time when you wanted to go to another a different school, you have to move into that district for your kids to be able to go there. Now we have open enrollment, which is a good thing. It gives choice to the parents. At the same time, it creates a bit of competition between you and your neighboring schools. We definitely got to look at what our offering is, what extracurricular activities do we have, how our facilities are up to date compared with our neighboring school districts. We need to always stay up to par if not excel in some key areas to ensure we don’t have open enrollment out of the district and lose that revenue.
Part of the reason I’m running is I think there are some opportunities on the horizon for this district and some pretty major improvements. I’d like to be a part of getting the community involved with that.
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Sandra Hayner of Ontario: When there’s an issue like we’ve had the last couple of years with Covid, what do you think we should be doing? Should we be mandating all children to be doing the same thing, or should children have choices as far as the mask issue or being vaccinated? Where do you fall on that?
Candidate Cari Keith: I hope I can say that that is past. But I think we’re probably going to have to do the same we did the last time: looking at the numbers, how huge this becomes if it flairs up again, or if we get a whole new thing. We have to look at that situation and what’s going that time. What vaccinations are available. But it really gets down to people making personally their own decision, and all we can do is make the best decision based on the science, based on any information that we have … and what worked and what didn’t work.
Candidate Anna Allison: I’m against mandates pretty much across the board. Vaccinations, masks, and pretty much everything else. There might be a few exceptions. I believe parents have more of a choice on what their kids do, and a lot of the science keeps changing. Dr. Fauci was always saying “the science, the science.” The science keeps changing. First you wear no mask. Then you don’t wear a mask. Then you wear one mask. Then two masks. And then you can’t wear that kind of mask; it has to be this kind of a mask. I think it should up to the parents, and I think people shouldn’t be looked down for if they wore a mask, if they didn’t wear a mask, if they got a vaccine, if they didn’t get a vaccine. Everybody should come together, and then, like she said, kind. I can’t say that has happened here, but in other schools, they are beat up, oh, you’re not vaccinated, you know. They treat people awful. And I think it’s terrible.
Candidate Matt Muellenberg: Cari brought up a real good point. Sometimes it’s out of the school board’s hands. It’s out of the district’s hands. The latest example of Covid, if you recall, Gov. Evers put in a statewide mandate at the beginning, so we didn’t have a choice. We had to have masks at that point. The federal mandate for masks on buses – that just came up about a month ago. Until that point, whether you wanted to or not, you didn’t have a choice. It’s not like we made a board policy that said, no, we’re going away from a federal mandate. We just had to do our best and try to follow the orders as best we could. I feel we did a pretty good job of that.
Beyond that, when there’s not a state or federal mandate and there is a choice for the school board, I’m going to stand pretty firm and say I’m pretty darn proud of what this school board did this past year, how they administrated, went about it, how the staff went about it. None of us school members are health experts. I don’t know anyone on the administration who is a health expert. This is all new to a lot of people; we’re all learning the rules and the signs and the data … We did a really excellent at getting the community’s feedback. I feel we did have parent/student choice pretty early on, earlier on than other school districts in the local area. It’s never perfect. Hindsight is 20/20. Given the decisions we had to make at the time, we did pretty well. I’ll stand by that and take a commonsense approach moving forward. Listen to what’s out there for data, but whenever we can, err to the side of parent/student choice. That’s my feeling on the best way to go when we can.
At that point, Anna Allison added: It’s been reported there’s been zero Covid-19, and that was after having an optional mask mandate.
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Ruth Ehlert of Norwalk: I would like to ask board members how useful you would find it if you were to have say, closer connections with parents, such as like a town hall meeting every so often? What importance is that relationship with the parents as far as the board, because I know a lot of people are intimidated going to an official board meeting. It’s all on record. I know a lot of the decisions are made are in private, and as far as just being open and connecting with the community.
Board candidate Cari Keith: Actually, that’s something that’s near and dear to my heart. I’ve always, always valued parent connection. When I worked here, the child, myself and the parent were a team. I’ve always been an advocate of that. And I think the other board members would agree that I have said that many times. I’d like to see more communication.
Board candidate Anna Allison: I was looking for the score card for Brookwood and I noticed the (enrollment) decline from 700 and something back in 2015-16 and I think it’s 600 by now. I think some of that has happened because of kids going to other schools, like private schools, Christian home teaching, and all that stuff. Part of that is because of lack of communication. I don’t know what the reason for the lack of communication is. There could be many reasons between the parents. I think there should be a parent committee formed to deal with this school. People can come together and debate and have transparent communication, and I predict if things keep getting worse, there will be more of a decline of people exiting the schools.
Board candidate Matt Muellenberg: With all respect, Anna, I just want to make sure that it’s known that you’re indeed correct, we have nearly 100 fewer students in the district today than we did, say, 15 years ago, but it’s not due to everybody open enrolling out. Our open enrollment in and out has been net neutral; maybe two or three students one way or the other, but fairly closely net neutral. It’s more that there are fewer kids in the district, fewer families living in the district. Probably it has more to do with fewer work opportunities. There is not a mass exodus from the district.
I’ve often thought, where do I get my feedback from the community? Certainly, there’s the handful of people I know and talk to for various reasons. But I realize that’s less than 10 percent of the community. How do I get information from the others? I think you’re onto something. We could definitely do more surveys and get parent/community input on certain things. I think there’s going to be opportunities for the community to share their feelings on various subjects in the near future. It’s important for people on the board representing thousands in the community, and how do we ensure we are representing everybody’s collective goals and opinions on various subjects? It’s a task I know I don’t take lightly. I certainly as much as possible try to leave my personal opinions and agendas at home when I go to the school board meeting. I try to do what’s best for the kids. We can do better; I agree with you. Continuous improvement.
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Janielle Hanson of Ontario: What ideas do you have for improving our reading and math scores at school? I think we are now in the lower 35 percent overall.
Board candidate Cari Keith: I guess I will have to look up these numbers that you’re referring to (Hanson replied that numbers were presented by residents at a school board meeting). We’re always trying to improve and going at it from so many different angles. One more recent thing is there has been talk about the Common Core. I’m allowing the kind of discussion that leads to higher level of thinking and those kinds of thing. They’re all a part of the language arts. Very, very concretely, we switched to a block schedule from an irregular schedule, going from classroom to classroom, in order to give the teachers and the students more time. Not all kids learn the same way, and I think with this block scheduling, the teacher has much more opportunity to deal with issues like comprehension, things like that. Our reading program at the elementary, if I’m correct, is very much being evaluated and examined right now. Are we really getting the fundamentals? So there are very specific things we are doing. Math, frankly, I don’t know.
Board candidate Anna Allison: I just looked up the scorecard; they were in the lower to middle 30s in some, and some of it has come into the 40s a little bit. They go back and forth. Wisconsin adopted Common Core in 2010, and I think it would be nice to see if when the Common Core … go back and check percentage wise before Common Core came into existence. I still go back to the old way. Sometimes the old way is better for some, for most people. We had to learn how to write, and I know they do teach handwriting, but people at the computer and the tablets and the calculators, I can go to a store and a young person will be in there, and you give them $5.10 because something is $2.10, and they can’t use the calculator to figure out what change to give to you. I can do that in my head. I didn’t like the experimental — I call it the “commonizing of education” with Common Core. I think it would be nice to do a study before Common Core came into existence to see if scores were higher then. I’m not going to say I’m going to guarantee it, but I have a good guess that they might be.
Board candidate Matt Muellenberg: I’m certainly not a professional educator myself, but I share a lot of your concerns with Common Core, and that’s helping my kids at home with their homework, right? It’s, like, wait a minute, when I was taught 25 years ago, we didn’t do it this way. I also recognize that it’s not a choice by the school board; it’s a state-mandated thing we had to do or else risk our state funding. There are things that come with that that make it a little bit out of our hands. If that’s the case, how do we make the best with what we got? Additional teacher instruction on better ways to have it sink in with the kids and learn it faster. Move involvement with parents helping their kids with their homework.
I would say our school district – I don’t know the numbers — but if I had to guess, I would say we are in the top 10 percent of school districts where the highest percentage have English as their second language. It’s also one of the greatest things about this school district: the diversity, the way our students come together and work together.
English was not their first language. They were not introduced to English until they came to this school. So naturally they’ll start out a little further behind than other students in other districts, in other areas of the country, whatever it may be.
I’d say what’s more important is when they look at our grade school scores into junior high into high school, how much have we improved? That would be the story to tell.
