Masks now optional at N-O-W

By SARAH PARKER | County Line Editor

Masks are no longer required in the Norwalk-Ontario-Wilton School District buildings, but sanitation practices begun during the Covid-19 pandemic will remain in place, the board of education decided at its meeting June 15.

Superintendent Travis Anderson had recommended that the board make masking optional, noting that 80 percent of the teaching staff had been vaccinated and Covid-19 numbers remain low.

Registering his opposition to the measure, Board President Justin Arndt said he disagreed with Anderson. “Kids haven’t had a choice in vaccinations. They hadn’t had an opportunity to be protected.”

Arndt acknowledged that he was going against the grain, saying, “That’s not necessarily a popular opinion right now.”

After telling Arndt, “I respect your opinion,” board member Matt Muellenberg said, “Folks still have the option to wear them. I believe it’s time to make them optional.”

Agreeing with Muellenberg, board member Kevin Bauman said, “It’s time to leave it up to the parents.”

Board member Julie Radke concurred with Muellenberg and Bauman, saying she recently had attended large events at which parents were unmasked but still chose to mask their children. “Certainly, it’s their right to do so,” echoing Muellenberg’s sentiments that those who wish to wear masks may continue with the practice.

The board voted 3–1 in favor of the measure, with Justin Arndt registering the sole opposing vote. Board member Cari Keith was not in attendance.

The new rule took effect immediately, and masks will not be required during summer school, which runs from July 12–29. Moreover, outside groups who use the school buildings will not be required to mask up.

But school staff still will continue to implement practices such as sanitizing classrooms and buses, Anderson said. Those routines had “kept our kids healthier than ever” in the past school year, he said.

Criticism of multicultural awareness survey

N-O-W parent Janielle Hanson of Ontario expressed her disapproval of a multicultural-awareness survey recently distributed to junior high and high school students, and then asked Principal Angela Funk to provide its results.

Some students responded that Brookwood was “the least racist conference school,” Funk said, but other students gave specific examples of racial insults heard in the hallways and classrooms.

“Like many schools, we have work to do. We will continue to promote kindness for all students,” Funk said.

Three students volunteered their names on their surveys, and district staff will meet with those students to learn more about their experiences.

The survey included the following questions:

1) Are you Hispanic/Latinx?

2) What is your race? 

3) How often did you hear a racist statement (stereotype, joke, or name-calling) this school year?

4) If you feel comfortable, please share some of the racist statements that you heard being used this school year.

5) What did you usually do when you heard these comments?

6) If you heard a racist comment and reported it to a teacher / staff member, do you feel that things got better after the report?

7) Do you feel safe at school?

8) Do you have at least one teacher or other adult in your school that you can talk to if you have a problem?

9) Have you spent time looking at your own racist attitudes?

10) What suggestions do you have to make our school community more welcoming and inclusive?

11) If you’d like Mrs. Funk or another school staff member to follow-up with you, please write your name below and mention who you’d like to speak with.

Hanson dubbed it a “racism survey,” suggesting that the optional, anonymous questionnaire possibly was designed with critical race theory in mind. She also asserted that teachers were assigning homework related to the Black Lives Matter movement and implying that “white men have caused all of our problems.”

Hanson has spoken against the teaching of critical race theory at previous school board meetings.

Critical race theory has become another point of contention in the nation’s culture wars, its definition fluctuating with ideological positions. According to Education Week, an independent news organization, “Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that racism is a social construct, and that it is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.

“The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.

“A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.”

But the theory’s critics maintain that it divides people into “oppressor” and “oppressed” groups and sets in opposition people of color against white people. Inclusion and diversity programs are held in suspicion.

As of mid-June, critical race theory has been banned in Florida, Arkansas, Idaho, and Oklahoma.

Disapproval of proposed building addition

Hanson also criticized the school’s plan to obtain a $2,128,319 FEMA Building Resilient Infrastructure Grant, which would help pay for a new, dome-shaped building at the school complex.

The intent of building is to provide shelter during weather emergencies, but otherwise the district may make use of it for its own purposes.

The district has not yet received word of its grant status; FEMA is expected to announce the award recipients this month. More details on the project, including blueprints, will be determined after the district learns of its grant status.

“Free money” could come with “strings attached,” Hanson said, but Anderson disputed that idea, saying, “We get to decide what goes in it.”

Also, Hanson maintained that school administration had been inconsistent in its presentation of matching-fund requirement of the grant, claiming that at one time, the figure had been reported as 70/30 but has since changed to 90/10.

At the school board’s Oct. 14, 2020, meeting, grant writer Jordan Buss said he hoped the district would qualify for a grant arrangement in which FEMA covers 90 percent of the costs; and N-O-W, 10 percent. That would put the district in the “impoverished level” of funding. Otherwise, FEMA would contribute 80 percent; and N-O-W, 20 percent.

Other business

• N-O-W recently received WIAA School of Excellence Recognition for the fourth consecutive year.

• The school’s lunch program will run through Aug. 17, and the district will receive $5.97 reimbursement from the USDA for each meal (which technically includes both breakfast and lunch).

Though last year the school distributed the meals at a pickup point in each village, that method became problematic, as families would reserve meals but not pick them up, and, as a result, the school would lose its reimbursements for those meals, Anderson said. This year, school staff is delivering the meals to students’ homes.

But delivery actually speeded up the process, as school staff no longer had downtime while waiting for families to arrive.

Last year, eight employees ran the program, but the school has reduced that number to four, because deliveries now are made only on Monday and Tuesday, rather than four days a week. 

• The board agreed to purchase Yamaha keyboards from Leithold Music in La Crosse for $10,825.91 for the school’s new Introduction to Piano course. About 12 students have enrolled in the course.

Because the keyboards were becoming more difficult to find, they needed to be ordered soon, Anderson noted.

N-O-W intends to use federal ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funds to purchase the keyboards.

• Bailey Hammon, a Brookwood graduate, will serve as a kindergarten teacher, replacing Julie Los, who retired earlier this year. Calleen Edington also will assume a kindergarten teaching position.

• Josh Beron, a Bangor native and a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse graduate, will take the helm of the school’s band program.

• The board approved the resignation of fourth-through-sixth-grade special education teacher Natasha Thompson, who has worked for the district for five years.

“She’s done a wonderful job,” Anderson said. “She just chose to take a job a little bit closer to home — in Necedah. We wish her the best in her new opportunity.”

Briehn Johnson, a Brookwood graduate, will take over the position.

• Brad Lindberg, who has served as a long-term substitute teacher for N-O-W, will take a permanent position as a fifth-grade teacher. Board president Justin Arndt abstained from the vote, as Lindberg is his brother-in-law.

• Gabrielle Luxton, another Brookwood graduate, will teach fourth grade starting this year.

• Also, the board hired Melissa Hansen to teach junior high science.

• The board approved a summer school driver’s education contract for Lisa Stoikes. Stoikes teaches the three-week classroom portion, and the district contracts with the behind-the-wheel portion with Driving Stars LLC of Tomah.

• Ten high school students have enrolled in the district’s new credit-recovery summer program.

• The board approved an early-August overnight field trip for the cross-country team.

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