 Hello, welcome to the Donahue Group. It's a new year, 2008, and we're delighted that you can be with us for a fast-paced half hour of conversation on local issues. Joining me today is our daunty band of, daunty, daunty band, daunty band of commentators. Sorry about that. Ken Risto, social studies king for the Sheboygan area school district. Tom Pineski, standing in for Lee Sherman-Dreyfus today. And Cal Potter, former state senator. We have a fair amount to talk about. It's a new year, it's a political time for nonpartisan elections in the city and the county. And the state, as a matter of fact- And national, really, because our primary for local elections will also be the presidential primary in the state. That's true, although we have not too many primaries going on, but in any event. Plymouth has a mayoral election, too. And we could just say right off the bat that Plymouth is certainly an interesting political climate with four people running for mayor, Mayor Pullman, who was certainly a newcomer and I think represented some change in the Plymouth area. And maybe like Mayor Perez, that kind of change wasn't as welcome as it could be by the people who weren't as changeable. I don't know, but in any event, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. And I don't even know who's running other than Jim Flanagan, long-time alderman out there. Peter Elrich, council member, giving up his seat to run for mayor. Oh, is that right? And Dale Nidal. He's also, I believe, on the city council. On the city council, yeah. Okay, all right. And it'll be interesting as our time goes on to see who jumps in the race for mayor in the city of Sheboygan, although that's a year away, so. By a lot of gossip around that. Oh, I know. Speculation. I think everybody except Miss Manners is running for mayor of the city of Sheboygan, but in any event. I'm partial to the name Flanagan, having been my mother's name and my son's middle name, so, in any event. But we think. Real issue oriented, isn't she? I actually think Mayor Pullman has done a nice job from when I'm able to determine. Getting a little bit more local, the city council races are in place. The Sheboygan Press is lamenting. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I poked you. The Sheboygan Press is lamenting the lack of contested races. In fact, it appears that Jean Kittleson's race is the only one that is being challenged. Or the only race where there will actually be an election. And. Isn't the first district ever race or did somebody drop out? That's true. There are two people running. Richard Manny is not running for reelection, so it's not an incumbent versus a challenger. But it's Ed Zurich, as I understand it. And who is the former HR director for the city. And Daniel Hill. Daniel Hill, I don't know. Anybody know Daniel Hill? That's your district, so I don't know. You're gonna figure out all that stuff. Yep. Wait till they come to your door. Come to the door. Invite them in. There we go. Let's talk politics. There we go. Bob Ryan has no opposition. Jim Boren has no opposition. Mark Hanna has no opposition. Gene Clionis has no opposition. So. And I think that's not as unusual as people may have thought. It's just in the last few years that there have been a lot of races and a lot of contests. My own theory is that the city council has spun into such disruption. It's kind of like the school board used to be years ago. You'd have to be crazy to run. I mean, I don't mean to be rude about this, but you say the wrong thing and there's a John Doe investigation being conducted by the district attorney. There's an ethics investigation being conducted by the city council. The police department does hours long investigation and these are all based on people being kind of rude to each other, which is certainly not a thing that we should approve of. And who says what to whom? Within your shot becomes an issue and people say, I don't need that in my life. I can see why there aren't very few people running. I think people are just saying, I don't need that in my life. I think people are willing to serve, but they find maybe more satisfaction out of security they have is running for a church council or something else rather than the city council where you're under the microscope or in spotlight. And not always fairly from what I've been able to determine. And there does seem to be some civility missing, but even given that a whole lot seems to be made of the certain lack of civility or... Some of it might be due to the news media today. Everybody wants to be the Washington Post and expose the Watergate scandal. You know, you read back in politics of the past. They didn't even mention whether somebody had an affair or whatever they did under their own time because it was sort of given that that's not part of the political arena. But today, I think everything seems to be under the watchful eye of the media and maybe reporters don't say, well, maybe that isn't worthy of print or airtime. They just put it out there just because it's a very competitive media today. I don't know. A couple of years ago or three or four years ago, we had a large number of people running, a lot of interest, three or four candidates. And I think this is a cycle. You just go, great interest, a lot of candidates run, the some win, some lose, they don't run again. And then there might be a lull. And then maybe at the mayoral election or shortly, there'll be another group of people running again. Could be just a lull. It could be... They're all waiting for the mayor's race. They're all waiting for the mayor's race. But it's not... We do have some new people that took out paper. So that's kind of nice. And I guess a couple of them are gonna be unopposed. Silas's wife is unopposed. I thought, well... That was nice, kind of just, you know. Just changed places, you know? Instead of me staying home and cooking dinner and cleaning the house. You stay home and I'll go to the council meetings and you could stay home with the kids. You never tread it, you're household. So they trade places. And then I think we got the two in the first and the sixth, Jeremy Decker. I don't know who that person is. But he's unopposed. But he's unopposed, but he took out paper. So you got some people running, not the volume that we had. And maybe it's just kind of a lull. And then next year, there'll be a lot more. I think part of it is when you look at some of those folks, the incumbents who aren't running, they're all relative, well, they're all new. Yeah, they're all new. Except for Kittleson. And I think most of them have really stepped back and really didn't participate terribly much in some of the circus. I know that Gene Kittleson didn't say much in that whole discussion of censure and non-censure and all that sort of thing and ethics investigations and whatever it might be. Certainly Gene Cuyunas didn't say much. I mean, with the exception of Alderman Ryan who put himself on the front page with some pretty less than diplomatic comments. I'm surprised that there wasn't somebody coming out of that district given that episode. Not because he did anything wrong necessarily, but it was just simply a little bit of an embarrassment. And I'm sure that when Bonnie Serta runs, they'll be, I would imagine they'll be someone. Well, no, that's it. She is not running. Well, she's not running. And she's in the sixth district and that's it. No, Bonnie, I'm sorry. Who may, excuse me, who's the woman who made the intemperative career? Vicki Meier. Vicki Meier, when Vicki comes up, excuse me, I'm sorry, not Bonnie. Sorry, Bonnie. Vicki Meier, I'm sure they'll, that particular contingent of Alderman will find someone in her district to run. Oh, I'm sure Barbara Tyshinsky will run again. That could very well be. That could very well be, yeah. Vicki Meier, Tyshinsky by not a huge of a close race last time. Yeah, relatively close. And so it'll be interesting to see how that works. I know one individual was approached by Alderman Hannah to run. And this individual was New Year's Eve night, so. You know, perhaps this individual was just feeling the effects of the new year, but he said he was going to run, maybe he wasn't aware that there was filing deadlines and things that have to be done. And he may have missed it, but he said he was approached by Alderman Hannah and Alderman Ryan to run. When I was first on the council, I think it was the deadline, first Tuesday in January. I think we had a council meeting on Monday, went to the bar with Eddie Darko and Tim Lorenz and they were just shooting the breeze. And he said, I think I'll run for mayor. I said, and we said, yeah, go to it. Next day he got his signatures, had to turn them in and he ran. Yeah. He got ahead one day and he ran. Who was this? Eddie Darko. Eddie Darko, okay. And he ran against Susha at the time. Okay. But it just happens overnight. You go out and have a drink. Sure, I've been thinking about it, I'll run. That's usually what you need. If you've been thinking and running around in your head, somebody actually brings it up and okay, you know, it's not just a loony idea I've got in my head. Yeah. It's actually, other people are thinking about it as well. Same way, yeah. Another value of taverns, is that what you're telling me? It's been a lot of great political work done in taverns. Yes, yes. For a long, long, long time. Long history. I'm sure Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, wish they had spent a little more time in taverns recently. Well, certainly not, Mitt. In any event. County board, there are at least, as I understand, three districts where there are no candidates at all. Which is somewhat surprising. I think you'd think someone would have, particularly with retirements, they might have said to their neighbor at the tavern or someplace, I'm not gonna run, maybe we ought to have somebody, you know, sort of cultivate somebody who is of like philosophy to take your place. At least, that's you think you'd care enough to maybe look for somebody, but I don't know. Maybe it's the impending of those four years off, decline in the number of board seats, and they're gonna go from 35 down to 25, isn't it? Right, yes, yes. So there are gonna be some people who are gonna just serve four years because they're gonna be probably thrown in with someone else. So maybe that's a deterrent as well, I don't know. Well, I know that we had spoken about it on an earlier show, but I mentioned the loss, in my view, of Bill Jens as county board, former county board chair and county board supervisor. And I would just reaffirm that loss because I think Bill was a fine, fine supervisor. But there are two people running for his seat, so that'll be a contested race, which I thought was interesting. Ken Conger, who I think did a fine job as the representative in the Kohler area, is not running again in Jeff Dickert, who is the superintendent of schools for the Kohler School District, is the only candidate. And so he'll be on the county board. And I think that's an interesting concept. I guess I always think of superintendents of school districts being a little more apolitical than that, but it'll be... As busy as heck that they can't fit in to something anything like this. The fact that they have day meetings, they don't have night meetings, do they, as a county board? Oh, yeah. I mean, the county board meets during the day, doesn't it? It does not anymore. Not anymore? That was a big issue. Okay. See, I don't even know. Most meetings are still... Many of the meetings are in the afternoon. Yeah, many meetings are in the afternoon. And that's for younger people who are working full-time. Exactly. And if you're in the townships, maybe you think I'd like to run, but I can't do it. And I think a whole lot of work in the county system does get done in the committee context as opposed to in the meetings themselves. So I think that's a, it's a very valid point. But there was that one election cycle when people were angry about the county board meeting in the afternoon and county board supervisors getting health insurance. And I can't tell you how many years ago that was. I don't really remember, but I know there was a big turnover, maybe 10, 15 years ago. So I think that's interesting. School board, again, no contested races. Barry Samet is filing again. David Gallinetti for his third term. Maeve Quinn is retiring after three very fine terms. Just one of the best school board members I think we've ever had. And she's been on for nine years. But a young woman who I don't, I have met, don't know very well. Jenny Pothas, I think is the name. Actually lives in my neighborhood. Her children go to grand school is going to be, is going to be running for Maeve's spot. And it appears she's uncontested. So school board races really often are not contested. When I was first on the board, certainly things were more stirred up and there were more people running. But I think people perceive the school board as being a huge amount of work. It is. And it is, it is. And recently I think it's been perceived to be a workable body. For a while there we had that split between conservative and liberal thinkers. And I think there were people who said, that's not how a board should be constituted. It should be for the benefit of the system and kids and so on and not philosophies and how you can advance your philosophy. And then the other thing is, we're talking about the board is you have Jeff Squire leaving early. My understanding is he's taken another job outside the community. And his seat is one of the two that are given to the outside of the city of Sheboygan. And so that the board will have to fill that vacancy and they're, you know, Alliantay, former principal who lives outside the city of Sheboygan. You have to be outside the city of Sheboygan again. He's put in papers and I heard there are others, but I've not heard names. So the board's gonna have a variety of... There's a school board, a point then, the full return. That'll be on January 15th and I think five people have applied. Tim Ebenreider. Oh yeah, Tim Ebenreider. Oh yeah, Tim, no problem. Paula Klotsin, Paul Erdle, who I, as I understand, used to be on the school board and I just don't know the gentleman at all. And Susan Hine, who's the wife of Dan Hine, who's the chair of the town of Sheboygan. So... Paula Klotsin would be a wife of a Sheboygan area school teacher, which is interesting because I would assume she would have to abstain from any votes on contractual issues. Right, and that we've had a number of employees, or school board members whose wives are, well, Ron Rinfleisch's wife is an educational assistant. Dirk Solomon's wife was a teacher, still is a teacher in the school district. I think there have been a couple of others. So yeah, they do not vote on those contracts. Okay. But that's about it, so. Well, the only Paul Erdle, is it Herdle, H-E-R-T-E-L? I think it's E-R-R-T-E-R, okay. Then I don't know the... But I could have that wrong. I know Paul Herdle is with big brothers, big sisters. Yeah, that's coming up. That's coming up next Tuesday or a week from Tuesday? January 15th. So that's a fair amount of interest. And of course it's always easier to get appointed. Yeah, you only have to campaign with a few people. Yeah, and they've done it late enough in the cycle that you don't have to run right away. I think the cutoff date is November 1st, so if you are appointed after November 1st, you don't have to run in the following April election, otherwise you do, so. And I think the timing of that wasn't accidental. That may be? I'm pretty sure. Yeah. That the announcement from Mr. Squire and the announcements were designed to make sure that that individual had to run in spring. Since we're focusing on this. I can't prove that, but I hear tell. Well, there you go. I am just focusing on the school district, which has a number of charter schools. And I mean it's really a big push in the Shabuagan area school district. Court of Appeals recently handed down a published decision about online charter schools. And I believe, does the Shabuagan area school district have an online? We have, starting this year in online charter school. Ask Ken to just talk a little bit about it. The online charter school in Shabuagan really primarily serves really two groups of people. One is students who are oftentimes expelled or suspended. I know the public often thinks that once we expel a student or suspends them, we wash our hands of them and they're on their own as far as in education. And that's not the case. The district is always required to at least offer educational services to kids and parents. If they choose not to take them, that's certainly their choice in some respects. Well the district, just so we don't have anybody up in arms, the district doesn't have to pay for those. Correct. And so, but in any event. And because they're off of our roles, we don't receive any state monies for them either. So there's the balance there. And we've created, the district has created a charter school that's primarily geared at those kinds of students or students who really prefer not to go to inside the four public walls of education. And there was a hope also that some of our homeschool parents who don't want their students necessarily within a public school, traditional public school setting, would also come online. And we have about 27 students, I believe, something like that. In the online program. On the online program. Somewhere around 20 to 27, somewhere in there. It varies. All ages, all grades. Primarily right now it's high school. It's just high school, nine through 12. There are some plans to push it back into the middle school as this program gets up and going. It's housed for people interested over at St. Clemens. There is a face to face component. In fact, for a lot of those things. So the students learn online, but once a month they report back into a teacher who's on a sub-organized licensed teacher, an employee of the sub-organized school district. To my knowledge, the last time I looked, there's only one student who's not part of the Sheboygan area school district area. Someone outside that district who is in that program. Which kind of leads you to the court's decision because the court was looking at Northern Ozaki County school district or something like that. Has an online charter school of several hundred, 600 students. And the court held that it violated three laws. First of all, there wasn't substantial enough supervision by teachers and there was more burden placed on parents to homeschool their students. That's perfectly acceptable in Wisconsin to have homeschooling, but a district can't receive state taxpayers' money and then allow parents to do the teaching, the substantial portion of the teaching. And also, it also violated the open enrollment law and the charter school law. Because charter schools are supposed to be accepting primarily or almost always students within their own school districts. And this one substantially is not. And the employees, the teachers that are online working with these kids are also not Northern Ozaki County teachers. I think this case is gonna hopefully resolve some of the questions that have been out there. When are aides paid? What constitutes a teacher and student-teacher contact as well as the open enrollment question. Because when you're dealing with an online program, it's quite substantially different from the seat time and the hours and staff requirements that a regular school is under. And do you make this cash cow for some districts who just wanna put something online because they have other budgetary problems or do you wanna make sure that whatever's offered is ultimate in quality for the kids who are participating? Right. I know it's easier for school districts, I think for school board members to actually vote to expel a student in the Sheboygan area school district now because there is a charter school that will allow these kids who normally can't have anything to do with the school district to be enrolled in the charter school. I think they call it the Success Academy. Right. And when I was on the school board, I always thought it was, you'd have students who would do terrible things so they could not be in the school district. But to cut them loose, to me, just seemed to be planting them in a criminal. Society to do terrible, more terrible things. Oh yeah, and our own homegrown criminals because these kids wouldn't even have the guidance of however little it might have been for them of a school system. And not to say that they should, and there were times when the behavior was so bad and the safety of other students was really of paramount importance. But now you've got students who can do this online school and they're actually in a school building. And I think it's a good second chance, but I don't know what impact this case will have on it. Oh, you're talking about the case. I was just curious about can an online student, you know, a home school student decides to go online instead of go to the school, can they participate in a school's activities whether it's forensics, theater, sports? That's an interesting question. That is a really interesting question because our district has created a variety of charter schools. I mean, and they're all, as far as, they're all equal in the eyes of the law. Of course, they're all charter schools. Now in the case of Etude, which is over housed in the same building over at St. Clements at the moment, I'm told that those Etude students are allowed their half time at North and half time at South. And we have one or two students who do wanna participate in interscholastic sports or forensics or debate or whatever, and they are allowed to go, because they're half time at North and South, go back to North and go back to South and participate as if they were a full-time North or South student. But it really is, as a former coach, WIA, it's really more a WIA issue because they have very strict rules about students participating in sports in a school where they're not a student. So it'll be interesting to see if, and I don't know if the district has had those conversations with the WIA when it comes to face-to-face, which is one online charter component and the Success Academy, which is the other online charter component. Most, you know, typically in honesty, Tom, the kinds of students who are in those programs generally are not in the least bit interested in participating in interscholastic activities. But someday, somebody will wanna be in a musical or somebody will wanna be in forensics or debate, not necessarily varsity football. And it'll be interesting to find out how that all happens. I think there's gotta be an answer for that because I'm sure that issue has come up before, just a little bit. Well, it's coming up in homeschooling. And in many districts, school boards have been very benevolent in allowing them to come in for the simple reason that it sort of bridges the maybe negative perception that some parents might have of a public school. The kid could come in and be in a play or take some type of activity in a public school. They might find out that the public school isn't the enemy that they might have thought and their kid is actually benefiting. And maybe somewhere down the line, the kid will then full-time enroll or part-time enroll in the school district and it'll be better for everybody. Some years ago, I think it was St. Dominic's or I think it was St. Dominic's, but it was one of the parochial schools. Didn't have enough students to, I think it was basketball. And they were able to participate over at Urban. Understanding is these people, of course, pay taxes like everybody else. And so they were able to work out an arrangement where those students were able to participate in a, and of course, you have Lutheran and Kohler here in the community. Shboy and Lutheran and Kohler have combined to put enough guys on the field to have a football team. So there are examples where- I didn't know that. That's a joint team, as I understand it. Is that right? The city and the county should be able to work together like that. Otherwise, Kohler, given the size of that school, just couldn't put a football team on the field. And I think Lutheran faced a similar situation. Situation, okay. Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to see, I'm sure this matter will be appealed to the Supreme Court and I think it is a likely case for the court to take because I think it certainly has statewide importance. Which will set the stage for what the legislation should be to recodify how we handle these kids. Exactly, exactly. And I think for some students, online education is sort of the last best chance. I think it requires, though, a pretty disciplined student. Reading skills must be high. Exactly. Patience. Exactly. I mean, I think it's hard enough for college students to do it. So I'm not quite sure I see how high school students, but at least for those expelled children, I think it's pretty important to have some connection to some sort of education. So we're gonna swing back and the city, happy new year. We have a new fire department ambulance service. It appears that at least day one and two were okay. And... Well, yeah, I figured the fire department was gonna do an excellent job. They do good work and anything they they put them, you know, apply themselves to, but I just didn't think it belonged to the fire department. That's all. So I know they're gonna do a good job. Well, it'll be so interesting and I'm sure it will be an issue in the next mayoral election. And it may even be an issue in this aldermanic election, but will the fire department make money? I mean, that was really the point of this is the city needed the revenue because otherwise you have the fire department needing to lay off firefighters because there just wasn't money for them. And so I think an honest look at the books will be... And how many people will actually dial the Orange Cross number who live in the city simply because philosophically, they didn't approve of the switch? My view is if you're in a 911 situation, you better just call 911. But the number is out there. Well, we're wrapping up, it's 911 right now. Thank you for listening and we'll see you again.