Wisconsin superintendent candidates trade barbs
State superintendent candidates Deborah Kerr and Jill Underly grilled each other about past decisions, including Kerr doing private business on school district time and Underly sending her children to private school, in a forum Friday hosted by the Wisconsin Policy Forum and the City Forward Collective.
The Wisconsin State Journal reported that Kerr, while superintendent of Brown Deer Schools, had used her district email address during school hours to correspond about business for her consulting company. The emails, obtained Friday by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, are from Kerr’s last few months before her retirement from the district at the end of last school year.
In May 2020, Kerr emailed with a graphic designer about making a logo for her new company, Lead Greatly, LLC — including correspondence during at least one school day.
In May through June, Kerr corresponded about a consulting job with Jim Furman, executive director of the Danielson Group, a Chicago-based organization that provides professional development for educators.
Furman said he was hoping Kerr would provide feedback on the group’s teaching framework and said they had funding from the Kern Family Foundation to pay her. Kerr scheduled a Zoom call with the group for 9 a.m. on a Friday in May.
In June, Kerr told Furman she wanted the work. They set up another meeting, and then Kerr asked Furman to send future emails to her LLC’s email address. A spokesperson for Kerr confirmed that she later did seven hours of consulting work for the organization in July and August.
In an emailed statement Friday afternoon after the forum, Kerr said the emails in question were a small fraction of the emails she sent on the job.
“These incidental contacts happen,” Kerr said. “The records request showed no evidence of widespread use of school resources for personal gain.”
Nevertheless, during Friday’s forum, responding to a question about funding public and private schools, Underly pivoted instead to Kerr’s emails.
“When we’re talking about finances ... I think it’s important that this morning we learned the deeply troubling news that Dr. Kerr misused school resources last year while she was super
“When we’re talking about finances ... I think it’s important that this morning we learned the deeply troubling news that Dr. Kerr misused school resources last year while she was superintendent to build her own private business.”
Jill Underly superintendent of the Pecatonica School District in southwest Wisconsin, state superintendent of schools candidate
intendent to build her own private business,” said Underly, who still serves as superintendent of the Pecatonica School District in southwest Wisconsin.
Underly also referenced financial issues in the Brown Deer School District in 2009. Kerr had placed the district’s business manager on leave after financial mismanagement came to light, then wrote him a supportive recommendation letter.
In response, Kerr said the email threads were “very incidental” and questioned Underly about her campaign ad.
“I also noticed you possibly used your own school to do filming of a commercial ad,” Kerr said. At a previous event, Kerr accused Underly of filming the ad for her campaign in a school building that was closed for students. Underly at that time said the school was in fact open, but had not disclosed the location.
In an email after the forum, a spokesperson for Underly’s campaign said the ad was filmed at Pecatonica Elementary School on a weekend. She said the campaign paid a rental fee and had two district officials other than Underly sign off on it.
Kerr also brought up Underly’s decision to send her children to private school for kindergarten, rather than their local public school.
Underly has opposed expansion of school choice programs, which allow low-income families to send their children to private schools with publicly funded vouchers. Kerr has said she supports families using these vouchers and has received out-of-state campaign funding from voucher supporters, while Underly has the backing of teachers’ unions.
“You cannot be a champion of equity when you use your privilege to pull your kids out of Leopold Elementary, a culturally diverse school in Madison,” Kerr said.
Underly said her children attended kindergarten programs at St. James Catholic School because it offered a fullday program for 4-year-olds, unlike the public school. Her children moved to public schools after kindergarten.
The election for the state superintendent position is April 6. Find information on voting at myvote.wi.gov.
The full forum is available on the Wisconsin Policy Forum’s YouTube channel.