School Board Communication: Out of Touch with Students, Families, and Staff
Photo from Hamilton School District.
This article series is a continuation from last week’s post.
Aadhitya Balaji and Nolan Doherty
Representation of the democratic processes that facilitate a smooth functioning of governmental bodies is extremely important and necessary in order to hold elected officials responsible. However, the Sussex Hamilton School District has been noticeably lamentable in regards to its description of meeting discussions and inclusion of board member votes. When navigating the district's center for meeting documentation, BoardDocs, the user is presented with a large list of meetings ordered chronologically. After selecting a meeting, the user is given the option to view the agenda, which only consists of the topics presented during the meeting. There is, within every agenda on Sussex Hamilton’s BoardDocs, no mention of the votes of board members on any proposed policy. For example, during the August 21, 2023 annual meeting, there was a proposed resolution for the adoption of a tax levy. A tax levy describes the taxes to be collected from the homeowners within a school district for a fiscal year. Within the agenda item details for this proposed tax levy, there is no documentation of votes or discussion. Instead, there is only documentation showing the recommended action by school admins and the school board’s adoption of the levy. How can concerned taxpayers understand the financial decisions made by the school district without documentation including the reasoning and board member discussion of these important fiscal policies?
Obscured Board Meetings
Below is a screenshot of the BoardDocs website interface that the user encounters when searching for an individual meeting.
This lack of transparency is even more apparent when focusing on large scale changes, such as the complete overhaul of the grading process, grading scale, and weighting of courses performed by the school board. These monumental changes are discussed in great detail by Sriya Gannapureddy & Nina Wolff in this Charger Press article. Within a May 8, 2023 meeting on BoardDocs, there is, listed as a discussion item, “Overview, Update and Discussion Regarding Staff Professional Development Training and Review of Assessment Practices Including Grading and Class Rank.” However, there is no record of the discussion held on this topic and this is the only time in BoardDocs an agenda topic relating to grading change is mentioned that we could find. Furthermore, BoardDocs has no documentation of a board vote occurring for this fundamental grading change. Despite never being documented in BoardDocs or any other manner, this vote still occurred and was determined to be a vote of, presumably, unanimous confidence for this tremendous policy change.
In addition to the vague description of board meetings, navigating BoardDocs itself is quite difficult. The user interface resembles a website built in the early 2000s and besides chronological ordering, there is no classification system to make finding specific types of meetings easier. In a similar manner to the lack of description present within the district meeting agenda, there is also a noticeable lack of notification given to the community when there is an important vote occurring.
We interviewed a parent, who wishes to stay anonymous, for the purpose of understanding the communication parents received in regards to these major policy changes. The parent, whose child attends Hamilton High School, cares deeply about the educational practices being carried out within the institution they send their child to and stays involved in the decision making process of the Sussex Hamilton School Board. As such, this parent attended the school board meeting where the vote on the topic of major changes to Hamilton’s grading policy was held. When asked how they discovered the date of this meeting that occurred on the 22nd of January, 2024, they responded, “I knew the district was considering the change, and I called the superintendent’s office and found out when it was up for a vote.”
When asked the followup question of if these changes were communicated well enough to the parents of Hamilton, they responded with, “No, aside from small focus groups there was no outreach to the larger community about possible changes. When trying to find information on the school board agenda it was not a visible item.” In addition, they added, “None of the possible changes were communicated in any way to the parents.” This testimony speaks to the nondescript nature of BoardDocs and the seeming lack of transparency present during the time when these changes were being implemented. Finally, when asked if they felt that their voice and opinions on this matter that stood to directly affect their child were valued during the school board meeting, they responded with this statement: “I do not feel like my opinion and speaking it changed any outcomes of the vote. Since they had already discussed this at a previous meeting, I feel the board members had already decided.” This testimony is a representation of how little the parents of Hamilton were told in the lead up to this tremendous change.
Absence of Justification
The lack of documented discussion within these district meetings corresponds to a deeper fundamental communicatory problem of the Sussex Hamilton School District. Throughout all of these large policy changes, such as the overhaul of the core system used to evaluate students academically, the adapted exam schedule, the upend of the music course scheduling, and more, there has been little to no justification given to whom these changes affect the most. Students, parents, and teachers have had very little to no communication from the district in regards to an academic based reason for making these large policy changes that greatly impact the everyday duties of teachers, the readiness of Hamilton’s students for higher education, and the educational institution that parents are both sending their children into every day and supporting with their hard earned tax dollars. Subsequently, students and parents may feel as if these changes are being done to them, instead of for them, as they are inadvertently left out of the loop. They are most likely solid academic grounds for many, if not all of these changes, but if the district and school board does not communicate them, the community can be left feeling disconnected.
In order to understand Hamilton Administration’s reasoning for the disinclusion of votes in BoardDocs and its communication practices, we scheduled a meeting with Dr. Paul Mielke, the District Superintendent, and Ms. Catherine Drago, the Assistant Superintendent of Teaching & Learning. When asked about the absence of a vote count of elected officials, Dr. Paul Mielke said of school board votes, “Ours are usually [unanimous] anyway; we haven’t really had too many split votes.” Dr. Mielke then expressed how board members are presented with a large amount of information prior to the decision in order for the board to reach a complete consensus before a vote occurs to back an admin proposition wholly. This can be seen clearly in the instance of the parent interviewed. Within this conversation, it was also mentioned by Ms. Drago, in reference to board members, “You have that debate in the room and you share your ideas.” However, this discussion and board member dissent, if any, is not represented in any way that is available to be seen by the public. This leaves Hamilton families unable to see how the board member they elected is staying true to their promises and pushing for policies they campaigned on, if they are at all.
In continuation with the theme of nondescript board meetings, the Hamilton School Board does not livestream their meetings unlike the Menomonee Falls School District, the Germantown School District, the Waukesha School District, the Arrowhead School District, the Wauwatosa School District, the West Allis-West Milwaukee School District, the Pewaukee School District, the Kettle Moraine School District, and the Elmbrook School District. In actuality, after extensive research we were unable to find another school district that did not record their board meetings. The video documentation of school board meetings is an improvement that can be provided to the families of the Sussex Hamilton School District. These recordings afford parents who are unable to attend board meetings the opportunity to feel informed and see the dialogue their elected board member is having.
In conclusion, while the district has made attempts at communicating with students, teachers, and parents there is much room for improvement. The lack of communicated justification for many of these large scale changes alongside the insufficient documentation of school board meetings have left many Hamilton families and staff members in the dark with feelings of uncertainty regarding the direction that the school board is moving. In order to uphold a sense of community and confidence within the district, we believe that the recording and in depth description of school board meetings, displaying of board member votes, and an academic rationale of changes is necessary. Hamilton is an amazing school district with an amazing community of students, families, and staff that deserve to be kept informed and up-to-date. We believe that these changes could add to a long-term positive impact where students, families, and staff feel as if they are in the loop at all times.
