Adults argue, students begin new school year
School boards could take advice from Pooh books
Sarah Myers, a reading teacher, was standing outside the main entrance to Longfellow Middle School in Wauwatosa on a beautiful morning, greeting students as they arrived for the first day of the school year.
“We're looking for a completely uneventful, normal-ish school year,” she said to several people nearby. “We're hoping it's a great school year.”
It was indeed a normal-ish beginning. Not quite normal, not with everyone wearing masks as they headed to the door or putting them on before they went in. But that didn't seem to be a big deal to pretty much everyone.
There was minimal hoopla: four students playing violins and one playing cello; the crew of a fire truck who pulled up for the kickoff but, in reality, just stood around for a few minutes; a few parents taking smartphone first-day photos of their children in front of the school's electronic sign.
What if, despite all the pandemic stresses and rising cases currently, despite the battles at school board meetings and in community politics in the Milwaukee area and nationwide, despite the past 18 months of abnormal circumstances for so many kids and adults, despite everything, what if school life goes back to normal — or at least normal-ish?
Demond Means, new superintendent of Wauwatosa schools, walked up several minutes later. It was his third firstday-of-school stop of the morning and things were going well, he said.
“Everyone's ready to get back to school and be in person,” Means said. “Everyone just wants to be together.”
Contrast the cheerful scene with some other slices of what is going on.
To start with, there are legitimate worries about COVID-19. The numbers for students and school staff who have tested positive even in just the first part of the school year have to be taken seriously. The precautions and procedures are not as strict this year as last, but they're still around — masks, plexiglass, hand sanitizing, some amount of social distancing.
The direction for the current surge of COVID cases will say a lot about how normal-ish this year will be.
And then you've got the community disputes.
An auditorium full of community members in Whitefish Bay several days ago defeated an attempt to hold up school budget approval because a group of parents were opposed to matters such as some of the books in the school library.
In the Mequon-Thiensville school district, the future of the school board is uncertain. An intent and well-organized group of parents have filed petitions signed by more than 4,400 residents to recall four of the seven members of the board. That is enough to move to a recall election, although the petitions have not yet been certified.
The petitions list as the reason for the recall that the four board members have been “abdicating office holder duties by giving away office holder rights to an unelected official.” That official is the superintendent, Matthew Joynt.
Isn't a superintendent supposed to run the schools? The simple answer is yes, but recall backers are not happy with some aspects of what has been going on. This leads back to issues such as mask requirements, policies last year on in-person versus virtual learning, and some hot-button social issues, but recall leaders say more broadly that the quality of education isn't as good as they want.
(Years ago, I asked a highly regarded Milwaukee area superintendent if he would consider applying to be superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools. He said he'd do it only if the school board agreed to meet once a year and the only item on the agenda would be whether to renew his contract for the next year. Of course, that wasn't going to happen in Milwaukee or anywhere else, but the tension over who runs schools is not new. And more than ever, we live in a time when expertise and professional qualifications are not only dismissed by many people but are often treated as causes for criticism.)
Then there's the situation in Oconomowoc, where three of seven school board members resigned, saying the political agenda and conduct of the other board members was making serious and respectful discussions of the merits of school policies impossible.
And you have the Waukesha school board action to refuse federal funding that would make food available for free to all students. After attracting national attention and in contentious fashion, the board voted 5 to 4 to reverse the decision after being painted as grinchy to hungry kids.
It seems curious that these disputes are taking place in communities with successful to very successful schools.
On the other hand, the players in these battles are almost all adults and the battlegrounds are outside of classrooms.
That brings us back to opening day at Wauwatosa Longfellow and perhaps every other school in Wisconsin. Pretty much everyone was doing what they do on a school day. The great ship of education seemed to be setting sail pretty smoothly.
What will it take to keep it on course? Given the age and interests of several of my grandchildren, I spend a fair amount of time watching Thomas the Tank Engine and Winnie the Pooh videos. A key line from “Pooh's Grand Adventure” comes to mind. Christopher Robin tells Pooh, "You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."
Consider that wisdom to guide students and adults in the tumult of our times as they aim for a school year that is at least normal-ish.
Alan J. Borsuk is senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@ marquette.edu.