SP School Board discusses policy regarding staff advocating for or against referendum

Amy Brehm, principal at Merrimac Charter School started off the Sauk Prairie school board meeting by sharing highlights from the school. “Just to remind everyone we are a project based, multi-age, agriculture school so you will see those themes in action,” said Brehm. Some of the highlights included, 4K students enjoying a tractor coming to the school for Farm Week, first and second grade (shared, multi age classroom) students have a program called seeds to snacks where they make dishes from food they have grown and they have reared and released many monarchs, third grade students are becoming independent learners in mathematics and they start each day with a morning meeting and greeting, finally, fourth and fifth graders have been doing a skeleton based project with milk cartons. “We also held a day where we did a lot of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) activities building-wide,” continued Brehm. “We also added four new ewe’s to the barnyard project and we also had the Sauk County Seal-a-Smile here and because we have a daily tooth brushing activity there were only three cavities within the whole school!” At the end of the meeting the discussion turned to Policy 9700 - Relations with Special Interests Groups. The discussion was specifically regarding adding a paragraph at the end of the policy regarding whether or not school district staff can advocate for or against a school district referendum. “We looked at this a number of times and we are discussing only the final paragraph which was suggested to add to the policy by the advisory group, Neola,” said board member, Dennis Virta. “When we looked at this initially, we reacted to this sentence ‘school district staff members may not advocate on behalf of an outside organization for a position on a referendum in any manner in which such advocacy is in the individual’s capacity as a school district staff member or may be perceived as such.’” He continued, “We didn’t want to be muzzled in that way if that were to include us so maybe we need to focus this with the intent being that Neola believes that staff shouldn’t be advocating one way or the other in the public. The reason we are asking this to be a discussion matter is because we feel it is muzzling first amendment rights of our staff.” A different advisory group based in Wisconsin said, “When district staff are off duty they can advocate for or against school referendum. Staff members do not surrender their rights as citizens because they are employed by the district. However, at all times staff should exercise careful judgment and should contact their administrators with any questions.” Virta continued, “I think the language [from the Wisconsin advisory group] is more aligned with who we are. Here in Wisconsin and in Sauk Prairie we should hold firm to our first amendment rights not just for school board members but we should hold these rights for all staff members.” The school district does have other policies in place where staff can’t advocate on school grounds or during the school day. The conversation continued with school board president, Richard Judge saying, “I want to point out that all of what Dennis has said has already been a part of the district policy for a number of years. This one addition is to school district referendum advocacy.” Judge continued, “I appreciate the committee’s work on the revisions to this, I think the revisions are good. I do have some concern about the nature of the language, particularly the line ‘school district staff may not advocate on behalf of an outside organization for a position on a referendum in any manner in which advocacy is in the individuals capacity as a School District staff member or may reasonably be perceived as such.’” “That ‘may reasonably be perceived as such’ bothers me because I’m worried it may be a bit stifling and has the ability to restrict someone’s ability if they want to get involved,” said Judge. Judge doesn’t feel the district at this time would stifle someone but that in the future, someone could take this language and change it so school district employees cannot be involved. “I’m not crazy about adding this language as it relates to school district referendums.” Steve Sprecher asked if the issues was the last part of the sentence, “which could be perceived as such.” Judge said, “In this particular instance I recommend that we don’t include this language, I think it can be done better. I do see the language where it says school district staff shouldn’t use school district logos and mascots but I don’t know how enforceable that really is.” “My recommendation would be that we not approve the school district referendum advocacy questions,” said Judge. “It tiptoes along the edge of creating parameters for employees about what is allowable speech with really iffy language about ‘could be perceived as such’ that is just not great, precise language to use for letting staff know whether they can advocate for or against something.” The policy itself was approved but the paragraph regarding school district referendum advocacy was stricken from the policy.