Welcome, everyone, to Midday Magazine for this January 26th, 2024.
Have your host, James J. Mailoff here, and we are welcoming into the studio some great
friends of ours.
First, Wisconsin's Rapids Public Schools, we have Craig Boren with us, superintendant over
there.
Good to see you, Craig.
Good to see you, James.
Always good to have you with us.
And you brought in the friend.
We have Tina Walder with us, principal over at Grove Elementary.
Good to see you, Tina.
Good morning.
Good to be here.
Tina, you start your first time with us and everything.
We appreciate the time.
Thank you so much.
We did pull you out of school.
Already, I think we're on a positive.
I think we're good enough.
We do appreciate you being here, Tina.
If you don't mind, I'm going to start with you and we'll come to Craig in a moment.
First, this is the first time you've joined us.
I want to get to know you a little bit.
Tina, where are you from?
What got you into this industry?
Well, I'm actually from Wisconsin Rapids.
I graduated from Lincoln High School.
Another Lincoln grad.
I'm a proud meat school student.
I learned in second grade that I had to become a teacher because I had great teachers.
I was the first generation in my family to go to college.
My parents didn't believe me when I said, I'm going to college when I was eight and they
were like, I don't know, but they helped me through and I ended up, I taught in other districts
for about five years and then I was able to come back to Rapids and it was like perfect.
Families here, I love it.
That's awesome.
That's really cool.
Thank you for sharing that.
There's a couple of notes there to me.
One, I think you've probably noticed this too, Craig.
So many people from this area, specifically Rapids, they get their education whether it's
here or somewhere else, but they end up coming back here to follow their career.
It just seems to be so no worthy that it happens so often.
It's got to mean something a little extra to you to be able to teach, to do this job
in general, but to do it in your hometown that's got to have an extra bonus to it, I
imagine.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you love a community, you want to get back to it.
You want to do something that helps it to be better and good and I love working with
families and the kids in the community and I'm very attached to Girl's School.
My kids went to Girl's School, I taught at Girl's School prior to becoming the principal
and it's just really an important place to me.
I'm not doing my job if I don't ask tough questions though and I apologize to do this
with your first time here and everything to ask such a heavy question, but does it pull
at your loyalty that you went to me and you're teaching at Grove now?
Is that the tough questions I've got to ask them sometimes?
I imagine that's fun though.
Well, yeah.
I'm very supportive of all the schools in town and where we, principals work wonders together.
We pick each other's brains.
We got a lot of good ideas we share and so it's great.
Yeah.
It's good.
I appreciate your mentioning that because that's something that I got one of the best
jobs in the world getting to sit here and talk with people like you every day and one
of the things I've noticed is all the principals Craig has brought in, they all interact.
They all talk and I don't want to, like I don't know when I was a kid if principals did
that or not.
I wasn't, you know, that hand in hand with a lot of my principals, but I hope that that's
always been a thing.
I hope that's always going on.
The sharing of information can only make our community stronger and do what we're all
doing this for for the kids, make our kids that much stronger and that much better.
That's really cool to hear.
I appreciate you touching on that.
One of the talk about Grove a little bit and some of the fun things that you guys are doing
over there, I wanted to start if you don't mind with leadership and importance to you
and your team over there with kids and leadership.
What do you guys do regarding leadership over there as far as that subject?
Yeah, well, we've had fifth grade safety patrol forever and that's really important to
kids and the opportunity to be leaders.
We started a new recess program through playworks.
It's an organization that comes in to train our fourth and fifth graders to be junior coaches
on the playground.
It's been fantastic.
It's helped with kids being more involved in activities on the playground, which leads
to fewer negative interactions on the playground.
We have fourth and fifth graders who are trained to be junior coaches.
They lead games and it's been really fun.
And Coach V is coming back next week from playworks.
We get another day with Coach V, which gets everybody really fired up and energized to keep
us going.
That's been really fun.
I've heard good things about playworks.
That's very cool to hear and great opportunity for kids.
Kids love to have a little responsibility.
They love to feel a little adult-like.
Of course, we know this as adults.
We never appreciate enough being kids long, you know, as we're young and everything.
But they really get the opportunity to have that feeling and it's through those lessons,
through those things that they build on that self-confidence that they build on those things
to be good leaders, good individuals as they go forward.
It's one of those things that has so many added bonuses to it.
I don't know if we, going back and forth, could cover everything.
And I really appreciate you bringing up safety patrol.
We've talked about this one before, Craig and I with other principals, but I will always
hit on this point.
I really think if you have the opportunity, almost every kid should experience safety patrol.
I don't tell my mother this, please.
She doesn't need more material.
But my mom was right.
I was a knucklehead in school and in sixth grade, going to Washington here, new in town
and everything.
I don't know about this or I don't want to do this stuff and everything and she had
me do it.
And it was one of the greatest experiences.
I loved it, instantly fell in love with it, instantly enjoyed it.
And some of that knucklehead in me started to filter out a little bit.
It still took some years, trust my, you know, it definitely took some time.
But it really did help get me on a process of, you know, quote unquote, straightening me
out and understanding responsibility, understanding being, it really, I did really take it seriously
that I got kids that were younger than me, kids that were my age and making sure that
they simply got across the street.
Okay.
It may not seem like a great big deal to us as adults, but you're a kid who maybe hasn't
had a lot of responsibility put on your shoulders before and means something and all of a sudden
you start to understand that a little bit better.
There's so many things in life that you, we can explain for days what this is, but until
you experience it, you don't really know those early experiences go so far for kids being
a part of safety patrol and some of that.
Yeah.
It's great.
Those are great programs.
Those are really good things.
And I imagine that through those things, you're being able to see a lot of the benefits
of them.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
That's cool.
Yeah.
For the leaders and for the younger kids, seeing fourth and fifth graders, setting good
examples for the behavior.
That's something that I'm sure that you guys get, that we as adults or maybe just people
who don't work in the education system don't get all the time.
That while it's very important for adults to handle themselves well, to be good leaders,
to understand that these are sponges that they're around and all these sponges are soaking
up information so easily and you just never know what kids are going to hear or see.
So it's always important how you carry yourself.
But as a child to learn that that, oh, kids look up to me too.
Kids are mimicking what I'm doing, kids are seeing what I'm doing and I'm only a couple
of years older than them.
That's something that doesn't really hit our minds very much.
Maybe if you're an older sibling, but not a lot of opportunities, so that's a key part
of this too.
I appreciate you mentioning that.
That's very cool.
We also have a program that we started called its school wide buddies.
So every student has assigned a group, there's four or five in a group and the third, fourth
and fifth graders are kind of the leaders of that group once a month.
We get together for 30 minutes.
They just scatter all over the building and the older students lead the younger students
in playing a simple game and that's been really fun.
Because the adults, we get to kind of step back and watch the kids just problem solve
and have these games together and we're just kind of hanging out.
And that's been really another fun opportunity for kids to be leaders.
So when we're doing these things, we create more and more.
I generally believe that everybody is a leader, that everybody has that born in them.
Some people feel more comfortable leading, some don't.
But the act of having that, the empowering that in children is vital.
It goes so far.
It's I think just as important as arithmetic or anything else because we don't know what
fields, what they might do with their lives.
But whatever they're doing, they're going to want some confidence in it.
They're going to want to feel secure in these things and feel good about these things.
The more we can build that up, the better our future is, the better all this goes.
Because I did some homework before our interview and it turns out children are the future.
I blew me away, blew me away, it was new information.
But it is pretty cool to be able to not only see those things developing, I imagine.
But to know and have that feeling inside, like that kid 10, 20 years from now is going
to be able to take these lessons and learn from them and continue to grow from them.
That's awesome.
Yeah, yeah.
You're hoping right.
You also have a recess program that sounds really interesting I wanted to talk about.
Yeah, well that's the play works.
I'll play works.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, we have a variety of games, all of our materials are in a tub, the kids take
the tub out, they set up the game, they have a little vest that they wear and they teach
the game.
Well, they learn the game in Fiat, everybody learns we have a game per month that our Fiat
teacher, Mr. Zhang, he's awesome, he teaches everybody and then they can play that at recess
with the leaders.
Awesome.
Working out great.
Yeah, that's very, very cool.
We're speaking with Superintendent Craig Brewer and with Wisconsin Rappings Public Schools
and Principal Tina Walner from Grove Elementary and Tina, I'm curious as citizens, as people
in the community, whether we are a parent of a child at a grove or we are just community
members ourselves, are the things we could be doing to help the education system, to help
our schools?
Are there, you know, certainly volunteer opportunities I imagine are a great thing to jump on.
But are there other ways we can be supportive, we can help?
It's a broad question.
It's a big question.
Well, I think, you know, supporting parents who are working hard to get their kids to school
every day and just knowing that sometimes balancing a job and getting kids to school, spending
time with kids after school, I think if there's opportunities for employers in the area
to be flexible with parents so that they can attend meetings, you know, have time with
their kids to go to family events, I think that's always an area that maybe there's room
for improvement in the community and I understand businesses have businesses to run but parents
want to work and they want to be able to spend quality time with their kids.
So that's just, you know, one thing that kind of pops into my head.
That's great.
And especially I put you on the spot and you've got a great answer right there, nicely done.
If I can just for myself speaking here, speak to the community and everything, I cannot
agree with you more and I just double that up in parents supporting parents.
You know, I think one of the things that, you know, we can read all the books and I took
parenting classes and all that but become, until I became a parent, there were certain things
you just don't understand until you actually become a parent and one of the things that
really hit me hard was, well, the people that should be supporting me the most, other
parents seem to be the ones that oftentimes are the ones taking the biggest digs at me
and my ex or my wife or something like that and we need more of support out there.
We need parents supporting parents more.
We need to see more of that and say, now you can think whatever you want in your head,
whatever you say to your significant other when you're laying in bed at night or whatever,
that's between you two, okay?
But in public, in society, when you're around these people and everything, it's I think important
to be supportive or at the very least going back to something my mom and all of our mom said,
if you ain't got nothing nice to say, not to say anything, you can, that is an option,
you don't have to speak, you don't have to tweet, you don't have to do those things.
I think that that only shows more support and hopefully makes it stronger, not only
are parenting out here but our education system and the support we show to not only parents
but teachers.
When it comes to Grove Elementary, you told us about some of the fun things going on over there.
For you, especially once you first became principal over there, what was one of the things
that stood out to you about Grove that maybe it was a little different than some of our other
schools in the area?
One of the things I love about all of our public, all of our schools, but specifically just our
public schools, everyone's got something unique to them.
Everyone's got, you know, I think about Washington's school and the dome there and things like that.
The location sometimes is that.
Was there something about Grove to you that stands out a little bit?
What stands out for me is staff that really work together and collaborate and really looking
at individual students and how are we going to work together to give them what they need to be
successful, the collaboration and the neighborhood school, like that's great.
Most of our kids live within two miles, they're all close, they know, you know, they can play
there after school and it really has a small town feel to it.
I think that's why I fell in love with it.
Honestly, I didn't attend Grove, but even drive and pass there, I get that feeling,
you know, and I'm driving past and recess is going on or anything like that.
The energy, the vibe is very much that.
I feel what you and your staff have created over there and really the neighborhood has created.
Nice work, really nice work and really nice talking with you.
Thank you so much for the time.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I'm going to put Craig on the spot for a moment here.
No, Craig, good to talk to you, good to see you.
Thank you so much for being here.
I want to talk a couple things with you real quick.
Certainly with the changing of the weather back and forth,
and as we are having this conversation, it's already changing, I'm sure.
Anything to update as far as that and how that's been going for our schools,
for our bus delivery and all that.
Yeah, well, it's been much quieter this year.
We have had two school closure days, same week actually,
a Tuesday and a Friday, a couple of weeks ago now.
We're well ahead of where we were last year because we had close three times,
I think, before Christmas break.
We've only got two in the books and it's the end of January,
so I'm sure there's going to be at least one, if not two,
or maybe even three more.
We do have days built into the calendar that are, you know,
can still consider snow days, so we still allow that opportunity for our parents and kids.
You know, primarily for the kids to not have responsibilities when you get that
magic snow day once in a while, but we also have the capability
of delivering some offsite to virtual instruction for kids K through 12.
And so we're not in the boat where you have to modify schedules or do any kind of wonky stuff
so that you can count the minutes.
And I guess I just remind listeners that we're not doing that, you know,
just because it entertains us, we're doing that because of state statute with respect to the
amount of contact time we need with kids.
And very clearly, if the pandemic showed us anything, kids need to be in school, right?
That's where you're going to see and getting instruction.
We also know that the virtual approach is not ideal for a good portion of our kids,
but it's better than the alternative, which is to completely mess with schedules and bus routes
and everything else we end up having to add minutes and days and that sort of thing into the calendar.
So we'll see all things go.
It's Wisconsin, so it's not a typical that we have a closure to
in February and March and sometimes, you know, God forbid, but sometimes April.
And we try to pay attention as much as we can.
I think we get the word out sooner than later.
When we have a circumstance or the National Weather Service is saying,
look, we have a winter storm warning.
It's going to start at this time and then at this time and that incorporates the majority of
a school day, then odds are that the call will be made, you know, the evening,
afternoon or evening before to give a parent's ample time to plan.
But there's still circumstance like today.
For example, 430 went out and checked my driveway and the roads right around my house
because of the potential for ice.
Clearly, there was some slippery spots here and there, but it was pretty decent overall,
no need for any modifications today.
But the central Wisconsin weather as of late is with rain and January again, it is unbelievable.
And yeah, so I mean, it gets us a little bit nervous, but ice is the worst.
You can navigate a couple inches of snow or three inches of snow, but if you got a quarter
inch ice, there's nobody going anywhere on those days. So it's been good so far.
Good to hear. And it is certainly, you know, as you touch now, it's important that we have kids
in school whenever it's possible and we want to see that as much as possible, but nothing is
more important than their safety. Nothing. Nothing is more important than that.
And if the roads are bad, they will figure it out.
You know, we'll get them whether it's at home, they're learning or they'll catch up on the
learning. That's just as important as any of the education that they would learn on that given day.
And while I think it's important, you know, you two know way better than I do
of how important routine is for young minds and young children.
I also think adversity also creates quite a bit too. And when that snow day comes out of nowhere
and stuff or they have to learn from home, yes, I understand that it might not be the same type
of learning that they would get in school, but they're adapting and they're learning to adapt.
And there's few things in the world that can adapt like a child can.
So I think that there is a lesson in that too, a silver lining in that too. While it's not
something we want to have happen or anything, I do think that there are ways for kids to learn
in everything in life and even in that scenario. Yeah.
Wanted to talk a little budget with you as well. How was that looking?
Well, not great to be honest with you. So we have we're not in a crisis circumstance.
So I think that's the main headline that I want to get out there. But on the same hand,
this past the buy-neil budget we're currently in would end the 24-25 school year.
And so during the next school years when the next buy-neil budget will be developed by the
legislature, what's interesting is that and this was of course touted by both parties.
So I'm not, you know, meaning to take sides, but generally it was purported that the,
you know, the 23-25 buy-neil budget was a historic investment in public education.
And we did after a very long period of time get some additional revenue capability of $325 per
pupil. And so over the buy-neil, that's 650. The problem with that is, and I don't, you know,
the rhetoric out of the capital I think is never, well, if you want something accurate,
you probably shouldn't ask a politician, I guess. So it comes down to the idea that the estimates
in terms of keeping pace with inflation pardon me were upwards of $800 or $1,000 per pupil per year.
And so if you have 625, clearly that's a fraction of, say, $1,800 or even $2,000 levy authority.
I'm not sitting here saying that anybody likes paying taxes. I don't like paying them. I don't
think many people do like paying them. However, we recognize the public good that comes from.
You know, the public education system, it's a technical college, and of course you're a local
municipality. And I guess the structural issue that we're entering into, and this is true for
many districts, not just rapids here, but throughout the state, is the idea that districts are forced
to go to referendum just to make ends meet, rather than having the state keep up their commitment
in terms of funding public schools. And again, calling out both parties in terms of what the
rhetoric looks like. So with that being said, we are predicting, as it stands right now, it's early
still. I mean, we'll have finer numbers in February and March. But we are predicting a negative
deficit budget as we head into next year. However, that's part of our plan. And the reason that's
the plan is because of a how to buy any budget turned out. And b, back in the old days, I'm sure
some listeners would remember, and some of our employees remember layoffs in force or mass layoffs
in which, you know, hey, look, we have a $2 million deficit. So let's identify 100 staff members
to give a non-renewable, possible non-renewable or a layoff notice to, and then we'll call them back
if we need to. That approach, and that's not atypical because 70% of schools budgets generally
are personnel, right? So it's their salaries and benefits. And I think we all know that
that makes up a lion's share. And so therefore, when you're looking at balancing the budget,
that's a piece that always gets hit. The problem with that approach now is that if we were to do that,
what would those people do? Well, they'd go find a job and they would get a job. And so when we
said, hey, just kidding, you can come back, they'd say, no, thank you. And that climate exists now
in recent history and didn't back in the old days. Frankly, in the old days, when I say the old
days, I mean, maybe 10 years ago, or 15, you'd post an elementary position and have 200 applications,
or 150. And now you post an elementary position and you might have 12, or 8, or 6. And so in
that hiring climate, much like all of our other employers are facing, is you've got to make decisions
that are based on protecting your staff members and retaining staff members, and you don't do that
by giving massive layoffs because, of course, these people are going to find different jobs.
So I say that that's intentional because our plan is to mitigate some of these issues over time
through attrition and modifications that are naturally going to occur within our staff because
we have a lot of staff members. Number one, but number two, people naturally will retire or
resign and take a job, say, back in their hometown or closer to a spouse's work or whatever the
case may be. And so we can utilize that to kind of use the step to phaseed in approach rather than
this, you know, this shock to the system as it were. That's exacerbated by our loss of
ester funds, which for the district, the ester three, um, disbursement that we received was $7.3
million. So if you recall, that's what was justified by the legislature in the prior
buying ill budget, not the one we're currently in, but the 20 or the, um, 21 to 23 buying ill
budget. We had no increase because hey, you guys got these ester funds, so spend those. That
wasn't really the intent of the ester funds, but nonetheless, that's what our legislature
saw fit to provide. And so those two things coming together mean that we're going to see some
issues here, uh, long term, uh, higher class sizes and, and so forth. Admittedly, we did over
staff with respect to ester, um, in our approach to assistant kids getting kind of backup to speed
or caught up as it were, uh, in recovering from the pandemic. And so some of that's intentional.
Yeah. But we are into a position in which the 25 27 buying ill budget we're hoping has some
legitimate increases for public education rather than just scraping by sort of numbers. Yeah.
Do you want to retire? Do you, do you want to be able to, uh, enjoy the future? Do you,
do you care about these things? If you do, it's, it's an election year. Pay attention to who you're
voting for, understand who, who you're voting for, understand who's in their pocket, uh, their
feelings and if they are going to back you in your, in your community, uh, it's vital, uh, going
forward. It's vital this year to understand that stuff to do your homework when it comes to these
things, um, because without that, you're not going to, there is no retirement. There is no,
there's no kids to take over. There's nobody to handle those jobs. There's so many factors that we
could get into that we don't have the time for, but it's vital to be approached this as we go forward
just as a vitalist child care is in this community in this area, uh, covering these subjects going
forward and voting for people that are going to back us on these things that are going to help with
these things. This isn't a Republican or a Democrat thing. This is a kids thing. This is a future
thing. So pay attention to those things. Do your homework, everybody. Um, thank you so much for the
time you two really, really great to meet you, Tina. I appreciate the time from you so much.
Um, say hi to your staff and all of our friends over at Grove, please. Hey, Grove School.
Yeah. Uh, it's not. Grove spirit date. Uh, nice, nice. Craig, always good to see you, sir.
Thank you for the time. You as well. Thank you. Well, uh, we'll have more midday magazine for you
next week right here at WFHR locally going radio.
