Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Accountability Scores

To Whom It May Concern,

My name is Westley Bennett. I am a citizen of Fall Creek, Wisconsin, and parent to twin eight year olds that are second graders at Fall Creek Elementary School. Recently, I have run for a position in the school board and failed in my attempt to acquire the position. However, during the course of this attempt, I wanted to learn as much as I can about how our school systems work/function, and how they are judged, objectively. This brought me to the DPI’s website, specifically the Accountability Scorecards. On this page – https://dpi.wi.gov/accountability/resources , I came across the “meaning” of the scorecards as well as their “Rating Category”, which I’ll provide below for reference:

This appears to be the way upon which schools and districts are graded. It appears to be (from what I can see), a hundred point scale, just as most of our students, teachers, and parents are familiar with. However, these “Rating Categories” do NOT appear to line up with what I, as a parent, would consider to be acceptable standards for a hundred point scale rating system. For reference, below I’ve provided a graphic of the Standard Grade and Grade Point Average that I obtained from the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ website, colloquially known as “The Nation’s Report Card”:

Now, were I to superimpose this grading scale upon the DPI’s scorecard, this is the results of what the DPI considers to be a proper accountability rating, when compared against the national standard:

A hundred point grading scale is a hundred point grading scale, so I believe that superimposing the NAEP’s national standards on this report card is quite appropriate. I want my children to have the best possible education, and to do that, there must be a consistent objective metric by which we can measure the success of their schools and district. In my opinion, the DPI’s “Accountability Rating Category”, as it stands now, is preposterous and unacceptable. To consider a “grade” that would be considered nationally an F to “Meet Expectations”, and to accept a C as “Exceeds Expectations” to me are outrageous propositions. I would have expected that the State of Wisconsin would have higher standards than this. A rating of a C has been, as long as I’ve been alive, considered to be the standard metric for what’s “average” and expected, therefore I would think that we would set the bar to label a score as “Meeting Expectations” to be at LEAST a score of 70, and so on, and so forth.

Having low numerical values, low expectations, and giving them labels such as “Meets Expectations” and “Meets Few Expectations”, in my opinion is harmful to our children. Our expectations of our school districts and schools should match with what we would expect from our children. If we expect LESS than that, then we are setting our children up for failure when they leave the world of primary education and are expected to take care of themselves as adult citizens in the “real world”. I would like an explanation of how these “Accountability Rating Categories” were determined, and how their thresholds were decided upon.

Upon further research, I have found that, at least according to the MacIver Institute, these scores and standards have actually been LOWERED from previous years (https://www.maciverinstitute.com/2021/11/many-students-in-wisconsin-are-failing-while-95-of-school-districts-receive-passing-grade-according-to-dpi/ ), is this true? If so, how are these lower standards justified?

This is an open letter, upon which I have copied my wife, my State Senator Kathleen Bernier, and my State Representative Jesse James on this e-mail, in the hopes that their attention could assist in getting these concerns addressed. I will also be posting this letter publicly on my personal website, https://bennettforoffice.org/ .

Thank you for your time, and I eagerly await your response.

Sincerely,

-Westley Bennett

Tri-County Area Times Survey

Tri-County Area Times Survey

As a denouement to the election, I wanted to post a couple of surveys that I took that were sent to me by Sean Scallon, editor of the Tri-County Area Times (formerly called the “Augusta Area Times” before being eaten up by a larger company). Below are my answers to their survey questions. I wanted to be sure that I had them available on my site, as other sites and pages have a tendency to “disappear” given enough time.

Village Board

Why do you want to serve on the village board?

As a member of the Fall Creek community for a little over a decade now, this place has become my home. I grew up as a Navy brat, moving from place to place, never staying in one place for more than maybe 4 years at a time. I’d been looking for a true home my entire adult life. When I got here, to this community, and found my wonderful wife Rebecca, and looked around… I knew that this was home. And I want to try to help make it the best possible place to be. For myself, my wife, my kids, and for all of my fellow Crickets. It’s as simple as that.

With gas prices high and looking to stay that way for the foreseeable future, is the moment for Fall Creek to try and bring businesses to town like a grocery store or restaurant or others that would save drivers from trips to Eau Claire or Altoona and how should the village go about to attract such businesses?

Well, first of all, we have to reduce barriers to entry in the community. We need to take a good, hard look at our bylaws and ordinances, and ask ourselves if they are really necessary. A business will be less reluctant to move into the community, if they have to go through pages and pages of what are sometimes very archaic and silly rules. For one example, the entirety of section 6.1.6., “Animals, fowl and insects not permitted in the village.” would seemingly preclude most any kind of pet store that would attempt to sell anything beyond a typical dog or cat. No local exotic pet stores allowed in Fall Creek. We have to remove these kinds of barriers to entry. It’ll make it substantially easier for businesses that want to come into the Village to have a chance.

Another issue that’s come to my mind is that some local business owners feel that they have a lack of say or a vote when it comes to village matters, even though they are working to help build the community in their own ways. For one specific example, Kristi LaRosa of Kristi’s Sweets and Treats, a store which has become not only successful locally, but has also become something of a renowned institution. She has stated that even though she owns her business and her building, she cannot vote in elections in Fall Creek and she has no voice at all in the running of the Village, because her home of residence isn’t here. Yet, she provides so much to this community. She provides a gathering place for family and friends to meet, as well as a great place for lunch and sweets! We should be able to rectify such a situation as this, and give business owners the CHOICE over which district they vote in. Not allowing them to vote in more than one, mind you, but letting them choose where they want to voice their opinions, in all of the communities where they have a stake. As it stands right now, she has no chance to speak with her vote when it comes to decisions that the Village Board makes that might affect her business and livelihood. That’s just one example, I’m sure there are many more.

What are some upcoming challenges the village faces and what’s your plan for meeting them?

In the last few years, I’ve been blessed to be able to travel across Wisconsin with my family through areas such as Rice Lake, Spooner, Ashland, Bayfield, Eagle River, and more. And through those travels, I’ve seen the results of rural decline, and it’s not pretty. Communities eviscerated by the consolidation of family farms into corporate farms. Small Towns that dwindle when the factories closed and production moved elsewhere. The slow decay of abandoned buildings, barns, and sheds all over our great state. It’s truly disheartening. Fall Creek, as a small village, may also potentially fall victim to this. I believe, given enough time, it is inevitable if nothing is done about it. We need to do what we can to promote the prosperity of the Village and make it attractive, especially to young people, so that they want to stay after they graduate, and to draw young people from other places as well.

That includes, but is not limited to – increasing our standards at the schools, seeking out and communicating with regional entrepreneurs that wish to create new small start-up businesses, and developing further our recreational resources. We have a lot of beautiful outside space (such as the trail at Keller Park) that have seemingly not been updated or maintained in years from the looks of them. On top of that, we live in part of the world where it’s seemingly winter for nearly half the year and people don’t want to go out – yet we have no multipurpose functional indoor recreation center (not a gym) open to the public, where the public can get together and have fun with each other away from the bitter cold. These things are all within our capability and within our grasp, we just have to be willing to put forth the effort. I hope to be able to help push for these kinds of reforms.

School Board

Why do you want to serve on the school board?

I have two children in the Fall Creek School district, my twins Abby and Will, who are in the second grade. I’m running, simply, because I want the best for them. But not only for them. For all of the children of the Fall Creek School District. Our children deserve the best. Our children are our future. What we do now, today, will affect their lives and the future of our community for generations to come. Every little decision will have a big impact on hundreds of lives going forward. I originally put my hat into the ring because I wanted to have a bigger voice, and be a better advocate for my children’s education. But then I found more reasons to get onto the board.

You can find on my website, http://www.bennettforoffice.org, the District’s and the Schools’ numbers for the last five school years that we have data for, along with links directly to the DPI website if someone doesn’t trust the numbers I provide and wants to pull them themselves. After looking at the numbers from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, I was surprised to see that, on paper at least, the Fall Creek School District does not in fact have the results that show that they are a fantastic school district, as public reputation and opinion seem to suggest. These numbers, this objective data, shows that Fall Creek is not in fact a top tier school district like we’ve all been lead to believe. It’s a “middling” school district in terms of actual results. This was again surprising and concerning to me.

We can have all the “good feelings” that we want about how we FEEL about our school, but will those good feelings help our children to be educated? Will those good feelings help them to prosper in the future? They will not. We need to take a serious look at these performance metrics, and at the inner working of the school district itself, find the “pain points”, and fix them.

What should be the district’s policies on COVID-19 or any other kind of pandemic for the future?

I am, politically and personally, a conservative libertarian. I truly believe that the government’s primary role should be to protect its citizenry from harm from others who attempt to violate their God-given rights. As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, we “derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness”. That should be the single role of our government, to preserve those rights. And the ORDER of those rights is no accident. For you cannot have The Pursuit of Happiness without Liberty, and you cannot have Liberty without Life. That, as framed by the founders of our Constitution, are the order and importance of each of these rights, and the order in which they should be considered. A global pandemic is an extraordinary and rare event. The last time that we had a global pandemic of this magnitude was the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed anywhere from 17 to 100 million people, making it the second most deadly pandemic in human history next to the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages. COVID so far has killed anywhere from 6 to 24 million people worldwide.

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Life should be preserved above Liberty, and Liberty above the Pursuit of Happiness. Death is the ultimate negator of every one of those rights. The District’s policies should reflect this. While I do not believe in vaccine mandates, as those are a violation of a person’s bodily autonomy, I do however believe in mask mandates, for one simple reason. “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”. Your right to expel potentially deadly microbes through the air ends where my breathing space begins, it’s as simple as that. A person should not be permitted to cause harm to another person, that’s the one basic role of government, to prevent that.

I believe in Truth, and I believe in Science. The science has shown us that masks provably reduce (but do not completely prevent, mind you) contagion by the simple matter of blocking or reducing the number of water particulates from exiting them. Other barriers as well, such as distance and plexiglass, also help prevent the spread of those same particulates. So yes, I believe in mask mandates. However, I do NOT believe in living in a permanent state of fear. We must use statistical analysis and modern contagion modeling to determine the course and spread of disease, and adjust our measures accordingly. Mask mandates should only be in place when there is a very good risk of spreading something as extraordinary as a deadly pandemic further. When that pandemic has finally become manageably endemic, and natural immunity and vaccination rates are high enough, then those mandates can and should be dropped as soon as it’s been determined safe to do so. And who should make that call? In my opinion, the CDC. These are intelligent people who have spent a lifetime learning about, and whose entire JOBS are to study disease and its spread. If you’re not going to believe and trust in them to do their jobs properly, are you going to believe and trust in other media personalities that have far less expertise in such matters? I feel that it would be foolish to do so.

What are some upcoming challenges the district faces and what’s your plan for meeting them?

The primary challenge facing not just our district, but many others in Wisconsin, is rural decline, which is a very real phenomenon. Children who grow up in rural areas are much more likely to leave their home town than those in urban areas. While Fall Creek may be partly sheltered from this effect with its proximity to Altoona and Eau Claire (as the statistical data from the Census Bureau shows), it is in fact a very real danger lurking around the corner. The only way that we can prevent this kind of decline, is by providing things that the big cities can’t – a personal touch, a dedication to academic excellence, and the ability to adapt quickly to individual student needs. These are the kinds of things that you can’t get in the larger cities and towns. But in the Village of Fall Creek, with the student population size that we have? This is absolutely possible.

Our teachers are working hard to do their best in educating our children. We just need to ensure that they are getting the right resources that they need in the right places. And seeing many asks from our teachers for additional funds on the DonorsChoose website? I’ve donated to a few of them myself, but the NEED for them to me is indicative of the district failing to meet their teacher’s needs. And if the teacher’s needs aren’t being met, then the student’s needs certainly aren’t. I hope to be able to change that, and to help funnel resources in the right way, in the right places. For example, on the site at the moment I type this teachers have stated that they need more library materials for their classes, curricular materials to help our children learn how to read, and one teacher needed new kitchen and market play sets to help teach young children about those functions in our community. These are important projects, which should be funded by the district. That they are not, means that there is an issue with how we are managing our budget. I’d like to get in there and try to fix that, putting academics and learning first before all other things.

Election Results

Good evening, everyone. Below are the unofficial results of today’s election, as per the Eau Claire County Clerk’s website:

I would like to congratulate Ms. Kaatz, Messrs. Aylesworth, Goodman, and Wright for their victories.

The Mistakes I’ve Made

I started this journey only about six months ago, and while the results were surprising to me, considering the effort I tried to put into it, they were not surprising to my wonderful wife Rebecca. She, having grown up in a small village in rural Wisconsin that’s roughly a quarter of the size of Fall Creek, told me that I’d gone about the process the wrong way.

I had assumed that in the 21st Century, all that was necessary for a successful venture of this nature was for me to push out as much information about myself to the public. Once people knew about me, read my words, saw how I thought, I thought that would be enough. I was apparently wrong. What I did was not enough.

My dear Rebecca explained to me that in a small town, it’s the PERSONAL touch and the personal relationships that you build that make the most difference. Considering the fact that the number of votes I received for the Village Board roughly matches the number of people I met and talked to in person? I suspect strongly that she’s right.

My Attempted Remedy

So, my fellow citizens, I wish to let you know that this is not the end, but just the beginning. I’ve built a life here in our Village, and intend my children to do the same. If it takes me going door to door over the next few years talking one on one with the 1200+ residents of our Village to make a difference… well then, that’s just what I’m going to do.

But, not just that. I’ll still be maintaining this site. I’ll still be updating it with my thoughts, and any information of relevance that I can find. I believe in full and complete transparency. The more we know, the better. This is my true belief.

As such, while both the Village Board meetings and the School Board meetings are open to the public by law, it is fairly inconvenient in this modern era for most citizens to find the time to bring themselves physically to these meetings on a regular basis. It is also inconvenient to do so on the schedule of those boards. And although the Village Board attempts to alleviate this a bit by providing a Zoom meeting to the public, it is by way of a non-clickable URL in a PDF document, which is a hindrance to those that are less “tech savvy”. The School Board, as far as I’m aware, doesn’t currently provide any such Zoom meetings or videos that I’m aware of, at all. All that we are left with are fairly vague minutes, that are pretty barebones, in my opinion.

So, I’ll also be visiting every Village Board and School Board meeting that I can make it to, and, as per Statute 19.90 of Wisconsin’s open meetings law, I will be bringing a video recording device, recording the open portions of the meetings, and publishing them here publicly, on this website, as well as providing my own thoughts and opinions on the proceedings.

Thus, I will be bringing those meetings to YOU, on your own time, to view at your leisure. At least until the boards decide to start doing so themselves.

It is my hopes that by bringing this information to you, we’ll all be more well informed.

Anyone that wishes to is of course free to contact me about any of this. My phone, e-mail address, and even home address are provided on this site. I wish to hear from all of you.

I’m not going anywhere. I’ve only just begun to involve myself in the affairs of our village. I hope to see each and every one of you, soon. I’m in this for the long haul, that’s a promise.

Pretty Words

This is going to be a short one, because I’m working hard at several other things at once right now. While looking into the workings of the Wisconsin DPI’s report cards, I stumbled across the following article from Will Flanders, Ph.D. who works for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a nonprofit conservative law firm:

https://will-law.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-2-Report-Cards-FINAL-1.pdf

With the caveat that anyone with a doctorate in ANY subject can put “Ph.D” next to their name, and this man has a doctorate in political science and NOT an education degree, the points he raises here about the actions of the DPI and how they are “moving the goalposts” is concerning to me. Specifically the following table, which if accurate, is highly disturbing to me:

If “Meets Expectations” can just be changed on a whim by the Department, then it’s arbitrary and meaningless. This is why in my opinion, the use of a standard “school grading scale” for these numbers is more valuable than these words of “Meets Expectations”, “Exceeds Expectations”, etc.

If we keep moving the goalposts, then it hides any performance issues of the local communities, the counties, and the state itself. I don’t WANT to have pretty words thrown at me. I want accuracy, and a standard that INCREASES rather than DECREASES over time.

Our children deserve better than this.

Meet and Greet

Good day to my fellow Crickets!

Your input and feedback are highly valued to me. As John Donne said, “no man is an island”. I am a part of this community, and if I’m going to be able to help it, I need to know what the community wants. If I am able to make it into public office, I will be acting as a public servant, and will need your advice to help guide my decisions.

As such, I will be holding a meet-and-greet at the Village Hall this upcoming Saturday, April 2nd. I have the hall for the entire day, but if I sat there all day long, my wife would probably kill me! So, I will be there for sure from 11AM-12PM, but please contact me if you wish to meet me outside of those times, and we can schedule a one-on-one session. Or, if you happen to be passing by the Village Hall on that day, you can try to drop by and see if I happen to be in at that moment! I hope to be able to meet and talk with as many of my fellow citizens as possible.

If you’re on the fence about voting for me? I’d like to talk to you. I’d like to prove my worth to you. I’d like to earn your vote.

If you’re absolutely NOT going to vote for me? I’d ABSOLUTELY like to talk to you. I’d like to know exactly why, to learn what I may be lacking, or missing in my campaign or messaging. What rubbed you the wrong way. I’m an open minded guy, and I want to hear all ideas and points of view, even those that may be contrary to my current view. It’s only through learning from others that we can expand our own horizons.

So, please, meet with me this Saturday at the Village Hall, I’m eager to see your face!

The Cold, Hard, Numbers

Why am I running for School Board? Some may be wondering. Well, as a parent with two beautiful children in the Fall Creek School District, I want the very BEST education for them, as I’m sure you all do as well. As Whitney said, “I believe that children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way.”

So, to me, it is IMPERATIVE that our children get the best possible education. I started this venture, this campaign, because I wanted a bigger say and a greater voice in my children’s schooling, and I could think of no better way for a parent to do so than to be on the board itself.

However, I started to second guess myself today, about a week and change before the election. Perhaps everything is fine, and nothing needs to change? Was I making a mistake in my running for School Board? Most importantly – how can we KNOW that our children are receiving the best education? The only way to do that is to look at the cold, hard, numbers. There is no other objective, logical way to measure such a thing. We can have all of the best feelings about our schools and our teachers, but those good feelings won’t help our children become productive and valued citizens out in the “real world”, if they don’t match up with reality.

When we are judging how our schools are doing, what better way, than by using a standard school grading system, wouldn’t you agree? Here’s what I’m going with, which is pretty standard for many school systems across the country, and allows a greater granularity than just the simple letter grades:

Now, where can I get some data from? Well, I think the best possible place to get that information would be from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s Accountability Report Cards. You can find their site, and get the data for yourself right here, it’s freely available for all Wisconsinites to view and download, either in PDF format, or in Excel format to do the number crunching, as I’ve done:

https://apps2.dpi.wi.gov/reportcards/

What I’ve done is taken the last five school years that we’ve had data for (excluding the 2019/2020 school year which is missing data for obvious reasons), and consolidated that data all to one Excel sheet for all of the Districts, and one Excel sheet for all of the schools. Below are the results for each of the last five school years, the average of the entire state of Wisconsin, and the average for the District/School. I also took those scores and applied the appropriate “grade” above to those scores. You can click the image to enlarge it, and I suggest you do so to see all of it.

Fall Creek School District

Fall Creek Schools

You can find the raw data that I collected for the districts here.

You can find the raw data that I collected for the individual schools here.

Let me start here by stating that I hold nothing but the highest respect for our teachers, for the teachers of the Fall Creek School District. They are some of the hardest working people I’ve ever seen. I can also see the passion and compassion in their faces and voices whenever we have our sessions together, or even when I see them interacting with the students around the school. These are GOOD people, working their hardest to do their damned best at educating our students.

What I found here when I looked into the data, frankly shocked and confused me. Wisconsin as a whole has abysmal ratings using a standard grading scale. I was extremely surprised to see that the entirety of the state has such low numbers that they can’t break even a basic “C”. Would we accept this report card from our own children as something to be proud of?

More shocking to me however, was Fall Creek’s record for the past few years. Fall Creek has been known in the past to be a fantastic school system, and still has that reputation publicly; it is “well known” as you may say. All that being said, these numbers seem to be contrary to this public notion. And I can’t reconcile that rationally with what I’ve heard and what I’ve personally experienced firsthand. If you look at the overall trend even in just the colors though, you can see that as the grade level goes up, the numbers appear to go down, so perhaps with my children being in the second grade, I’ve gotten to see the best that we have? I can’t say for sure.

What I can say for sure is my opinion, which is that I can’t accept a series of “Cs” and “Ds” as acceptable grades for the school my children go to. I want, and demand, better for them. The thing that bothers me most about this is that the state of Wisconsin states on their own report cards that these numbers either “Meet” or “Exceed Expectations”. Well I’m sorry, but they don’t meet or exceed my expectations for my own children. I want better for them, and for your own children.

I’m going to do whatever I can as a parent to ensure that our children have the best results possible. If I can be blessed to do it on the School Board, then I will much appreciate that opportunity and chance, and try to do my best for my fellow parents to turn these numbers around.

But if I don’t get elected? I’m not going to stop. I’m going to keep digging, keep pushing. I’m going to do what I’ve always done with every problem I’ve come against – take it apart piece by piece, understand and learn about the pieces, then figure out how to put them back together again, but better.

Because that’s what I do. That’s what I do in my professional life as a computer programmer, that’s what I do in my personal life as a husband and father, and that’s what I hope to do on the School Board, if my fellow citizens will vote me in.

I will fight, for all of us, and for all of our children. For our future.

Addendum

While typing up this article, a fellow concerned citizen who chose to remain anonymous contacted me and provided me with the document below, which I have not verified for its veracity. If this information is correct however, then it’s another source of data that shows that we have reasons to be concerned as parents about the current direction of the school:

Board Info Spring 2020

Tribalism and Cooperation

Tribalism and Cooperation

Well, there it is, officially in black and white at http://myvote.wi.gov. I’m on the ballot for both the Village Board and the School Board:

I am happy to see all of the candidates for the Village Trustee position. I’m sure that any three of them would make worthy Trustees to help steer the course of the village. Vote your heart, I know I will.

I am however, surprised and slightly disappointed that the School Board listing was for only one position, and that there’s only myself and Mr. Wright running. Surprised, because I didn’t pay enough attention to the bylaws of the school district that states that every third year only one position on the board would be open rather than the typical two. Disappointed because only the incumbent and myself chose to list ourselves on the ballot.

I, for one, would have been happier to see a half dozen people interested in and vying for the position of School Board member. Because… aren’t our children worth it? I admit that this is the first year that I threw my hat in the ring. Previous years, I didn’t feel like I was yet in a good enough place in my life to perform or commit to such duties. So perhaps most of the rest of the eligible persons in the community are in the same place that I was in years prior.

But still, out of almost a thousand eligible persons, only myself and the incumbent Mr. Wright were interested in helping to shape the direction of our School District? That’s quite concerning to me.

In the future, I hope and I plead with all eligible residents of Fall Creek, please consider putting your name down for future elections. We need to hear all kinds of different voices, ESPECIALLY the voices of those that haven’t been in public service before. We need good, fresh ideas, and different perspectives.

Why am I so adamant about this? Why do I **WANT** to have more “competition” for the positions that I’m running for? Shouldn’t I want to be able to run with as little competition as possible to increase my chances of “winning”?

I believe that to have a thriving democracy, we have to have active participation by as many eligible and interested citizens as possible. I believe that NO position should ever be on the ballot “unopposed”. I also believe that having only two people on the ballot leads to tribalism, which can only result in a worse outcome for everyone.

That word… tribalism… why do I keep bringing it up? Why is it prominently displayed on my main page, and in the title of this post? Because it is the not-so-secret poison that’s harming our entire society and draining it of all positive cooperation. By setting up elections as a “horse race” between two people, you end up creating two “groups”… Group A, and Group B. And that begins the “fight” of “us vs. them”, or “me vs. you”. And all people are expected to pick and align themselves with one “side” or the other. This leads to not only competition, but competition’s ugly cousins… Rivalry and Belligerence.

I don’t want to “fight” with anyone, and I refuse to. We ALL care about our community, and every single person has had valid and valuable experiences in their lives that can contribute to good governmental decisions. By splitting ourselves into separate groups, we are starting from a place of OPPOSITION towards each other, rather than cooperation WITH each other. And the productive conversations necessary for successful compromises can’t form when each of these “sides” are at each other’s throats. We’ve seen this for decades at the national level, and it needs to stop somewhere.

I’m stopping it here at our local level, at least as far as I have the ability to. Which means, such rhetoric won’t be coming from me, period. I will say nothing negative about Mr. Brock Wright, who is also running for the same position of School Board member. That is neither beneficial, nor desired, and will NOT contribute to our community. It could only harm it. Thus, I will not perpetuate such things.

Not that I expect that Mr. Wright would perpetuate such rhetoric, let me make that clear as well. Just that with only two persons in the race, it’s EXTREMELY easy for us to get into the mindset of “A vs. B”. I implore you, let’s not do that. Each person must simply make their own choice over the best possible person for the position. How they make that choice, is entirely their prerogative.

And again, I implore all eligible persons to look at themselves, and at their lives, and give a second or third thought to running in the next election cycle. I’d like to see that next ballot filled with at least more than two interested candidates for each position!

When we all have an interest in the future of our community, and a desire for its success, then we all win, together. So every extra name that pops up on those ballots shows that a community is filled with more people that are actively engaged in and care about the future of it.

And that is a win for us all.

Building a Brighter Future

Building a Brighter Future

We should seek out ways to make our lives, and the lives of our children better. Not just for ourselves, but for those that come afterwards. I need you to help me build Fall Creek in a smart way.

I’d like to learn about you, your interests, what either brought you to Fall Creek, or is causing you to stay here. I want to learn what your desires for our village are, what your concerns are, and what we can do to alleviate those. Most importantly, I want to know what you think is the best path forward for our little village.

A Foundation in Tradition

A Foundation in Tradition

I have a hope that we can preserve the small town feel of Fall Creek, and make our village flourish without turning it into a clone of its biggest neighbors.

I will work towards building our shared traditions, our shared spirit of community, and our enthusiasm for working together to solve our own problems. I believe that Fall Creek, the State of Wisconsin, and the United States of America all have fantastically conflicting traditions of freedom and community, prudence and progress, forward thinking and nostalgic love. I believe that we can reconcile these concepts, and work with all of them together to build a harmonic community.