COLUMN: School Board effectively abolishes committees
By Mike Somers
The Stevens Point School Board has effectively eliminated the incorporation of governing by committee.
While committees still exist, they are not being used for decision-making, discussion, or as a means for parents and taxpayers to address school issues. Since February 2020, the School Board has conducted business, passed resolutions, hired staff, and passed budgets without ever deliberating the details within its committee structure.
I recently researched Stevens Point School District Committee Meetings in hopes of discovering what these committees are up to. Since Early 2020, all committee meetings have been canceled. I went to my email and sent a message off to the Stevens Point School Board President, Meg Erler asking her why this is happening and what her position was on canceling committee meetings for the last 20 months.
To her credit, Erler quickly responded, “The school board has been operating as a committee of the whole during this time of COVID-19. Per District policy, the agenda is set by the president and vice president of the board, and the district superintendent.”
Despite this, no apparent effort has been made to conduct committee meetings—not even virtually. Schools have returned to in-person sessions since this past spring. We have all been working since the initial lockdowns of mid-2020. The School Board continues to meet. We have all figured out how to live with COVID. Not so, for the committees.
The Board implements, as most school boards do, a content-driven agenda to conduct their monthly meetings. Using this method, the Board takes the work done at the committee level, discusses key points, and performs question and answer deliberation at a general level.
Resolutions are introduced and decided upon or sent back to the committee for further work. Most committees consist of a combination of Board members and citizens of the district. The public is allowed to attend.
The Board follows a type of “policy-driven” governance common with school boards across the country, and the adopted policies of the Board specifically outline this. Erler is correct in stating that the policy of the Board is for the president and superintendent to set the agenda for each board meeting.
What she is not stating is that committee meetings are where items for each agenda are generated.
Committees fulfill a significant and pivotal role in how the Board conducts its regular business within the school system. Through their unheralded wisdom, Erler and School Superintendent Craig Gerlach apparently no longer feel committees are a necessary part of the Board.
In the past five years, six committees have been engaged within the Board structure: Business Services, Human Resources, Educational Services, Policy and Legislative, Communication, and Technology Steering.
The six committees meet monthly prior to each Board meeting and focus their efforts on pertinent issues, which are then sent to the full Board for review and action.
With the realization that committees have not met in 20 months, community members are asking “who is taking care of business” within the school system. A cursory review of monthly Board meetings shows that most agenda items have been dispensed of via brief discussion—and in quick fashion, just as if the committees had prepared and submitted them.
But the committees, not having ever met, did not submit agenda items for approval. The question of who is preparing the agenda and deciding what business the Board will conduct at its monthly meetings remains. What is being discussed “behind the closed doors” of the Stevens Point School Board?
Watching a local television news report recently, I saw the governor rubbing elbows with and handing out COVID dollars to Stevens Point school administrators. Looking closer, I noticed how he was getting up close and personal with several school children at the school he was visiting. Lesson learned: In living with COVID, our school bigwigs can meet with the governor and get up close with school children but cannot meet in a committee.
As of November 2021, committee meetings have not resumed. The past three full meetings of the Board have been conducted virtually behind closed doors, and were, according to District Attorney Louis Molepske, Jr., in apparent violation of Wisconsin Open Meetings laws.
In the April 2022 spring elections, voters will elect four members to the Board. This time, let’s hope that voters will decide to elect four members who will perform their obligations as they are elected to do.
Mike Somers is semi-retired and lives with his wife in Custer.
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