By Kim McDarison
The Whitewater Area League of Women Voters State of the City and School District forum was held Thursday, Sept. 23.
Whitewater Unified School District Superintendent Caroline Pate-Hefty and Whitewater City Manager Cameron Clapper each shared presentations about the school district and city, respectively. Questions were taken after each presentation from the moderator and members of the audience.
The hour-long forum was presented using a virtual format and moderated by League Co-President Mary Beth Byrne.
Following is the “State of the District” address as delivered by Pate-Hefty. The “State of the City” address will be reported in an upcoming story.
A portion of the State of the City address, focusing on the water drawdown project underway at Cravath and Trippe lakes is here: https://fortatkinsononline.com/cravath-trippe-lakes-restoration-plans-on-schedule-city-manager-says/.
District highlights
Aided by a slide presentation, Pate-Hefty noted that with the completion of her first year as the district’s superintendent, there was much activity to report.
Among highlights of the past year, she said, was an achievement of Lincoln Elementary School Principal Mary Kilar, who was one of 16 statewide winners of the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation 2021 Principal Leadership Award. As a winner, Kilar was awarded a $6,000 grant which, Pate-Hefty said, Kilar will be applying to her school.
She next pointed to the achievements of the district’s music teachers who collectively were honored with the Best Communities for Music Education award in 2021 from the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation. The honor has been earned by Whitewater music staff in previous years, she said, listing such years as 2012, 2014, 2017, 2019 and 2020.
She talked about changes within the district brought about by COVID-19, some of which, she said, helped the district create “new traditions.”
She cited “great feedback from our students and their families,” in response to the district’s decision to hold this year’s high school graduation ceremony outdoors. The ceremony was the last celebration held, she said, on the old high school football field, which, she noted, has since been updated and is today called the stadium field.
Some 141 graduates from the class of 2021 “made it through a tough year,” she said, adding that during graduation, they “were outside celebrating.”
On June 10, Pate-Hefty said, the district honored “retirees from two generations of retired teachers,” including those retiring in 2020 and 2021.
“There is a tremendous amount of service and history that go with these teachers; over 537 years of service in changing students’ lives,” she said.
She pointed to a production of “Madagascar Junior,” a play performed by summer school students between July 8-10. The district’s summer school students attended classes at the high school this year between June 21 and July 2, and July 5 and July 16, Pate-Hefty said.
Some 609 students participated in summer school, she added, describing summer school enrollment as a return to “good numbers.”
Looking at athletics, she said, upgrades were made to the high school’s football field.
A turf groundbreaking ceremony was held on July 26.
“We took some problematic areas of turf that were causing us water problems and cancelations — we were struggling to keep water flowing off of them — so we took those areas and we’ve done some revamping and turfing to help us out with that water flow.
“The turf stadium, which used to be called a football field … is now soccer and football, so we refer to it as ‘The Stadium,'” she said.
Currently, Pate-Hefty said, the district is engaged in a planning process, focusing on upgrades to the high school’s softball and baseball fields, describing those plans as “a second part of the project that just initiated.”
She said the district hopes, after achieving its upgrades, that it will be able to host larger events than it has in the past. Plans call for the further involvement of “other sports teams, in collaboration with the university and with Treyton Field, so it really can open us up for additional large events,” Pate-Hefty continued.
Additionally, she said, this year, the district also was able to “highlight teachers as they’ve returned.”
She said the district has a number of teachers who “have been with us for an amazing amount of years.
“I was really proud to give away that 30-years-of-service award, along with the others.”
Last year, she said, for those who watched her (State of the District) presentation, “we talked about doing school really different. And this year, while we still have COVID plans and precautions, we really wanted to get back to some of our traditions that make kids feel welcome in school buildings and so you will see that we are a mask optional school district at this time, and so we worked very hard to make sure that that’s the comfort level because students feel both ways about what makes them feel safe.”
Pate-Hefty continued: “So we’ve worked hard to make sure everyone is comfortable in this process and it’s been a fantastic start of school, and we are getting to see some of those traditions that we didn’t see at the start of school last year, and kids are really enjoying it.”
Sharing a slide, Pate-Hefty pointed to a collage of photographs showing the celebration of the new Stadium Field held Sept. 10. She described the enthusiasm and turnout for the opening of the new field as “fantastic.”
Also this year, she said, the district has four 2022 Herb Kohl Teacher Fellowship nominees, including Sara Sixel, Greg Steward, Stacey Joseph and Whitney Updike.
Looking at school financing, she cited a need for advocacy at the state level to make sure there is financial support for all students, “so we can make all kids successful as we begin to work through a population — about 30% of students that have English language needs and 15-20% of students with disabilities. So we need that financial support to make sure things work for them.”
“But,” she continued, “we are a district that works hard to make sure that we’re being fiscally responsible with your funds.” Pointing to a slide showing property tax mill rates between the 2011-12 and the 2020-21 school years, she said: “You can see last school year —we don’t have those projections quite yet for this year, but we have projected a mill rate of 11.97 and we are able to relook, cut and carefully watch our spending, and we were able to bring that down and give that back to our taxpayers.”
Pate-Hefty said the district this year has an estimated budget of about $27 million.
The district has also recently hired a new business manager, Pate-Hefty said.
The new business manager, Benjamin Prather, was listed among presenters at the forum by the League of Women Voters in information released in advance of the event.
Prather did not present information during the event.
“You’re going to be seeing his face around town soon,” Pate-Hefty said, adding that among his duties will be updating the district’s budget and website.
Returning to the slide, she said, “state level funding is really important for us. You can see how that hasn’t changed much,” she said noting that balancing available funding with student needs is a continuing district priority.
Through COVID, she said, the district learned that the staff had “grit,” and, she said, “that we were a family, and even when the world got kind of difficult, and messaging was tough around education, we gathered together and made it count, every student, every day, in a unified way, and that’s really our mission and vision.”
Questions
As moderator, Byrne asked two questions of Pate-Hefty:
Said Byrne: “I believe there are two social workers who have been working with students who went out of district, so how are we doing?”
She asked if students were returning to Whitewater schools, further inquiring about increases in homeschooling.
Pate-Hefty, responded, saying: “I would say that we have not had a significant increase in homeschooling. That’s a difficult number; we have to make sure that families registered specifically for homeschooling. As far as overall numbers, although the count is not considered finalized, at this time — there are a couple school districts in the state that have to register their numbers in order for us to finalize ours — but it looks like we have an increase of about 80 students from last year. And that’s exactly the direction we hope to be moving as a district.”
Byrne asked: “Has there been any feedback that you got from parents in terms of the approach with masks, or no masks, or options?”
Pate-Hefty said: “Yes, lots of opinions in both directions. We had a strong show and feedback from families early on that choice was important to our families, that they can make choices as families,” she said, adding that working to create policies about masking has been stressful for “a lot of school boards.”
According to information released in advance of the forum, the event was live-streamed on the LWV-WW Facebook page: facebook.com/lwvwhitewater.org, and has been recorded for future broadcasting on the City of Whitewater local access Channel 990.
For more information about the league, visit its website: https://my.lwv.org/wisconsin/whitewater-area.
Following are some of the slides presented by Pate-Hefty.
A slide as presented by Whitewater Unified School District Superintendent Caroline Pate-Hefty enumerates upgrades made or planned to be made to high school athletic fields.
A slide highlights the achievement of Lincoln Elementary School Principal Mary Kilar who was selected as a 2021 Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Principal Leadership Award winner.
A slide highlights the achievements of the district’s music teachers who have been selected collectively as the recipients of the 2021 Best Communities for Music Education designation given by the National Association of Music Merchants Foundation.
The above slide, shared by Pate-Hefty during her presentation, highlights four nominees for the 2022 Herb Kohl Teacher Fellowship award.
The above slide, as shared by Pate-Hefty shows a total budget calculation for the 2021-22 school year at approximately $27.5 million. The calculation is slightly down, the slide shows, from an unaudited 2020-21 calculation of $28.3 million. Looking at the bar chart, showing the varying levels between state equalization aid received by the district and the taxpayer-funded levy, the chart indicates, as Pate-Hefty noted during her presentation, that the levels of aid received by the district have not changed significantly over the last 10 years. The above chart, showing budgetary figures, is more easily viewed here: https://sites.google.com/wwusd.org/budget/2021-22-budget/original-budget-august.
A slide shows a 10-year history of the mill rate collected from property owners within the district. The slide highlights a change in the projected mill rate, which, Pate-Hefty said during her presentation, had come in lower last year than initially projected. According to the chart, the 2019-20 district budget was supported by a tax contribution calculated using a mill rate of $11.5. The rate was initially projected during the budget formulation process at $11.67. Calculations for the 2020-21 budget were initially made anticipating a mill rate of $11.97. The actual mill rate used was $11.1, according to the chart. During her presentation, Pate-Hefty said: “we were able to bring that down and give that back to our taxpayers.”
Mill rate, as defined by the Wisconsin Department of Instruction: “School district property taxes include levies for general operations, debt service, capital expansion and community services. Property values are equalized to reflect market value rather than local assessed value. The equalized levy rate is the total property tax levy divided by the current year equalized property value with tax incremental financing (TIF) values excluded. Levy rates are shown in “mills” or property tax dollars levied per $1,000 of equalized property value.”
Whitewater Unified School District Superintendent Caroline Pate-Hefty gives the State of the School District address during the Whitewater Area League of Women Voters forum held virtually Thursday.
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