Green Bay Area Public School District elections (2015)
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Two seats on the Green Bay Area Board of Education were up for general election on April 7, 2015. A primary election would have been held on February 17, 2015, if more than two candidates had filed per seat.
Two at-large board incumbents were up for re-election. Andrew Becker and Mary Frantz's terms ended in April 2015. Frantz did not file to run for re-election, leaving Becker and challenger Edward Dorff to run unopposed.[1]
Dorff participated in Ballotpedia's 2015 school board candidate survey. Check out the "Ballotpedia survey responses" section to see his answers.
About the district
Green Bay Area Public School District is located in Brown County on the eastern border of Wisconsin and Lake Michigan. The county seat is Green Bay. Brown County is home to 254,586 residents, according to the United States Census Bureau.[2] During the 2011-2012 school year, Green Bay Area Public School District was the fifth-largest school district in Wisconsin.[3]
Demographics
Brown County underperformed in comparison to the rest of Wisconsin in terms of higher education achievement in 2012. The United States Census Bureau found that 25.8 percent of Brown County residents aged 25 years and older had attained a bachelor's degree compared to 26.4 percent for Wisconsin as a whole. From 2008 to 2012, the median household income in Brown County was $53,419 compared to $52,627 for the state of Wisconsin. The poverty rate in Brown County was 10.9 percent from 2008 to 2012. During that same time period, the poverty rate was 12.5 percent for the entire state.[2]
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Note: Percentages for race and ethnicity may add up to more than 100 percent because respondents may report more than one race and the Hispanic/Latino ethnicity may be selected in conjunction with any race. Read more about race and ethnicity in the census here.
Voter and candidate information
The Green Bay Board of Education consists of seven members who are elected at-large on a staggered basis to three-year terms. If more than two candidates had filed for any board position, a primary election would have been held on February 17, 2015. Because only two candidates filed for the two seats up for election, both candidates advanced to the general election on April 7, 2015.
To be elected to the board, candidates must reside in the boundaries of the school district for 28 days prior to the filing of a "Declaration of Candidacy" form. Furthermore, at the time of taking office, each candidate must be a resident of the apportioned area he or she is elected to represent.[5] Candidates must also be 18 years old and citizens of the United States. Unless pardoned, those who have been convicted of a felony are not eligible for election to office in Wisconsin.[6]
Candidates had between December 1, 2014, and January 6, 2015, to collect between 100 and 200 signatures for their nomination papers. The signatures had to come from residents of the district that the candidate sought election to represent, but the petition circulators were not required to reside in the district or municipality. Circulators were required to be U.S. citizens and 18 years or older.[7]
Residents could register to vote in the election at the polling place on the election day. Proof of residence was required when registering to vote.[8] In March 2015, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Wisconsin's voter ID law allowing it to take effect. However, Wisconsin officials stated they would not enforce the law until after the election on April 7, 2015. No photo identification was required to vote in this election.[9]
Elections
2015
Candidates
At-large
- Andrew Becker
- Incumbent
- Former educator
- Edward Dorff
Election results
Incumbent Andrew Becker and newcomer Edward Dorff were elected without opposition.
Endorsements
There were no official endorsements in this race.
Campaign finance
Candidates were only required to file campaign finance reports if they did one of the following:
- accepted contributions, made disbursements or incurred obligations in an aggregate amount of more than $1,000 in a calendar year
- accepted more than $100 from a single source in the calendar year, except contributions made by candidates to their own campaigns
Past elections
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2014
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What was at stake?
2015
Issues in the district
Superintendent speaks out at hearing on proposed budget
At a public hearing on Gov. Scott Walker's (R) proposed budget, Green Bay Superintendent Michelle Langenfeld told the Wisconsin Legislature's Joint Finance Committee that she needs help crafting her district's budget. Langenfeld said her district cannot be sure what its revenue will be with the possibility of unlimited vouchers available to private schools for the 2015-2016 school year.[10]
“How do I explain, that if history is to be our guide, many of these students will never have attended the school district and therefore, the voucher program is literally taking money away from their students’ classrooms to pay for vouchers," said Langenfeld.[10]
Langenfeld was not alone in speaking out against the proposed cuts and changes to public education funding. Education officials from the Appleton Area School District, the Howard-Suamico School District and the Ashwaubenon School District joined Langenfeld and more than 200 others to testify at the hearing. Along with education issues, people spoke to lawmakers on health care issues, transportation funding and changes to programs for seniors and the disabled.[10]
Staff members from private voucher schools in Green Bay, Appleton, and Fond du Lac also attended the hearing to praise the governor's proposal to expand the voucher system.[10]
Student information requested from school choice group
School Choice Wisconsin, a school choice advocacy group, requested information on all students attending the Green Bay Area Public School District in February 2015, and under state law, the district was required to provide it. Green Bay Superintendent Michelle Langenfeld, however, informed parents of the request, and after hearing from a number of them, School Choice Wisconsin changed its original request.[11][12][13]
"We have never had a request from a third party asking for information about every single student. Our real concern is student privacy," said Langenfeld in response to the initial request.[12]
School Choice Wisconsin filed an open records request for student names, addresses, phone numbers, grade levels and schools from a total of 30 school districts in the state. The request came after Gov. Scott Walker proposed lifting the enrollment cap on the statewide voucher program. Jim Bender, president of School Choice Wisconsin, said the gathered information would be used to educate parents on their school choice options and would likely be shared with private and parochial schools in the state's voucher program. He likened the requests to other marketing efforts, such as billboards and mailings, and said the same information is provided in student directories and to college and military recruiters.[11][12][14][15]
In response to questions from parents about the information, School Choice Wisconsin limited its records request to student addresses only, no longer requesting students names, phone numbers, grade levels or schools.[13]
"We worked with the district to both clarify our use of the data and help resolve parental concerns. It was never our intention to use the data in any way that would cause privacy concerns," said School Choice Wisconsin President Jim Bender in a joint statement released with the school district.[13]
Some state officials saw the request as an infringement on student privacy. State Sen. Dave Hansen (D) and State Rep. Eric Genrich (D) expressed concern over the student data request.[11][12]
"As a parent and lawmaker, I'm outraged by this request for personal student information," said Genrich.[12]
Genrich said his office received a number of concerns in regards to the request, and he relayed these concerns to School Choice Wisconsin. After the joint statement was made, Genrich released his own statement.[13]
"While I remain opposed to this open records request in principle and in its entirety, I am pleased that some progress was made in the short-term to better safeguard student information," said Genrich.[13]
Together, he and Hansen propsed a bill to protect students’ personal information. They planned to allow access to student information only “to advance a school’s educational mission but keep it out of the hands of those who might seek to harm children.”[11]
Unlike some districts, the Green Bay Area Public School District would have had to provide all the requested information to School Choice Wisconsin if they had not limited the request, as the district defined everything the group originally asked for as directory data information. State law requires school districts to turn over directory data information to anyone who asks for it, but it also allows school districts to decide on their own definition of what constitutes directory data information. The Oshkosh Area School District, for example, had a more limited definition of directory data information, so it did not have to provide School Choice Wisconsin with the addresses or phone numbers of its middle and high school students.[15]
According to legal counsel for the Green Bay Area Public School District, the district planned to change its definition of directory data information for the 2015-2016 school year. The district asked for a fee of $380 in order to assemble and copy the records requested.[14][15]
Combating truancy
Officials in the Green Bay Area Public School District sought to change the district's 11.6 percent truancy rate during the 2014-2015 school year. Administrators, social workers and police officers teamed up to start a new initiative to get kids to school.[16][17]
That initiative started with a letter sent early in 2014 to families with a history of truancy, signed by the school district, the district's attorney, the Green Bay police force and the municipal judge. Then, over the summer, social workers identified which families had the highest truancy rates and met with them individually to work on getting their kids to school. This new initiative is trying to avoid former methods of dealing with truancy, such as writing tickets or punishing students, and instead help families overcome the barriers that keep their children from going to school.[16][17]
According to Erica Winkler, a social worker in one of the district's elementary schools, those barriers, such as a lack of warm clothing to wear in the winter months and having no transportation and no adult available to walk children to school, are more often the cause of truancy in elementary school than a student's desire to skip class. The district's $7.9 million budget for student transportation allows around 9,000 students out of 22,000 to receive transportation, but expanding student transportation would be fiscally irresponsible, according to district officials. Instead, they are looking into cab options, gas cards and bus tokens for those who have transportation issues.[16]
The more students fall behind when they are young, the more anxious they become and the less likely they are to want to go to school, which creates a learned behavior, according to Winkler. This is why the new truancy initiative is focused on elementary school children.[17]
Changing the grading scale
In a unanimous decision by the Green Bay Board of Education, students in the district were graded on a new scale starting with the 2014-2015 school year. The changes added plusses and minuses to the five letter grades and made a failing grade 10 points lower than the former grading scale. Nearly 89 percent of teachers in the district were in favor of the switch. The changes were made to give teachers more flexibility in grading and help students compete with other students in the area. Though existing GPAs will remain, under the new system students on the border of a B under the old scale would be granted an A- with the new scale. This could mean a GPA bump for some students, which could bring in more scholarship money for those going to college.[18]
Ballotpedia survey responses
One of the two candidates in this race participated in Ballotpedia's 2015 survey of school board candidates. The following sections display the responses to the survey questions from candidate Edward Dorff.
Top priorities
When asked what his top priorities would be if elected, Dorff stated:
| “ | Re-establish trust in the district, internally and externally. Validate the history, experience, and dedication of the staff, families, and community members who have invested so much in the district. Bring those who are closest to the actual work to the decision-making table.[19] | ” |
| —Edward Dorff (2015)[20] | ||
Ranking the issues
The candidates were asked to rank the following issues by importance in the school district, with 1 being the most important and 7 being the least important. This table displays the candidates' rankings from most to least important:
| Issue importance ranking | |
|---|---|
| Candidate's ranking | Issue |
| Closing the achievement gap | |
| Expanding career-technical education | |
| Improving education for special needs students | |
| Improving college readiness | |
| Expanding arts education | |
| Balancing or maintaining the district's budget | |
| Expanding school choice options | |
Positions on the issues
The candidates were asked to answer 10 multiple choice and short answer questions from Ballotpedia regarding significant issues in education and the school district. Links to the candidates' responses can be found below.
Key deadlines
The following were key deadlines for the Green Bay Area Public School District election in 2015:[7][21]
| Deadline | Event |
|---|---|
| December 1, 2014 | Candidate signature gathering period began |
| January 6, 2015 | Signature submission deadline at 5 p.m. |
| February 9, 2015 | Campaign finance report due |
| February 17, 2015 | Primary election day |
| March 30, 2015 | Campaign finance report due |
| April 7, 2015 | Election Day |
Additional elections on the ballot
- See also: Wisconsin elections, 2015
One seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was up for election on April 7, 2015. The general election for city and county offices was also on that date. Statewide, a constitutional amendment question regarding the selection of the state's supreme court chief justice was on the ballot.
Recent news
This section links to a Google news search for the term "Green + Bay + Area + Public + School + District + Wisconsin"
See also
| Green Bay Area Public School District | Wisconsin | School Boards |
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External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Abbey Smith, "Phone communication with the Green Bay Area Public School District Office of the Superintendent," January 7, 2015
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 United States Census Bureau, "Brown County, Wisconsin," accessed August 28, 2014
- ↑ National Center for Education Statistics, "ELSI Table Generator," accessed January 27, 2014
- ↑ Brown County Clerk, "Election Results," accessed February 5, 2014
- ↑ Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, "Wisconsin Candidate Eligibility," accessed September 22, 2014
- ↑ Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, "Candidates: Getting on the Ballot," accessed September 22, 2014
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Wisconsin State Legislature, "State Statutes: CHAPTER 8," accessed September 22, 2014
- ↑ Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, "Voter Registration," accessed September 22, 2014
- ↑ The New York Times, "Wisconsin Decides Not to Enforce Voter ID Law," March 23, 2015
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 WTAQ, "Green Bay-area public school officials decry proposed budget cuts," March 18, 2015
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 ABC 2, "Green Bay lawmakers want law to protect student information," February 13, 2015
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 Green Bay Press Gazette, "Voucher group requests student info from public schools," February 13, 2015
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 WTAQ, "Modified open records request sent to Green Bay school district," February 18, 2015
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "School choice group seeks personal data on students," February 13, 2015
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Fox 11, "School districts differ on giving up student information," February 13, 2015
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Fox 11, "Green Bay elementary school truancy rate raises concerns," December 11, 2014
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 ABC 2, "Green Bay Schools, Police, Courts Tackle Truancy in New Way," December 11, 2014
- ↑ Fox11, "Grading scale changing at Green Bay schools," July 21, 2014
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Ballotpedia School Board Candidate Survey, 2015
- ↑ Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, "CAMPAIGN FINANCE REPORT DATES," accessed September 22, 2014
| 2015 Green Bay Area Public School District Elections | |
| Brown County, Wisconsin | |
| Election date: | General election - April 7, 2015 |
| Candidates: | At-large: • Incumbent, Andrew Becker • Edward Dorff |
| Important information: | What was at stake? • Key deadlines • Additional elections on the ballot |
