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An Opportunity at Whitewater High

In most communities – and certainly small towns with fewer large institutions – the events at the local high school count for a great deal. In Whitewater, the high school principal has accepted a job at nearby Bigfoot Union, in Walworth, WI, as district administrator. That district scheduled a public meeting on Sunday afternoon to…

Whitewater High School, Monday Morning, 2.27.17

Update, 12:25 PM: “Two suspicious packages were located and analyzed and were subsequently determined to be non-threatening. The interior of the buildings have also been search for any suspicious items. No additional suspicious items have been located in or around the buildings.  Students and families will be notified via Infinite Campus once the building has been re-opened. Classes…

Borsuk’s Annual Education Awards

Alan Borsuk, Senior Fellow in Law and Public Policy at Marquette Law School, recently published The year’s education winners and losers (12.31.16) and More winners and losers in education awards (1.1.17). He expresses his gratitude: “Thank you to all the people (especially politicians) who give me so much material. This is not necessarily a compliment, but you…

Update: James Surowiecki on What the Press Missed About Trump’s Win

I posted yesterday on James Surowiecki’s contention that Trump’s success with non-college whites was predictable, but that Trump’s better-than-expected success with college-educated whites is what the press missed. See, James Surowiecki on What the Press Missed About Trump’s Win. Surowiecki makes a few follow-up remarks to his tweet-stream of yesterday. First, Surowiecki is not saying that…

Design, Late 2016

Whitewater’s local public school district held a board meeting last night, and one of the topics was physical change to the schools following a successful construction referendum in November. The district administrator gave an overview of some design possibilities, that one could characterize into two broad categories: design changes for students’ safety (e.g., more secure…

On Lake, McHenry, and Walworth Counties

In August, I wrote that dorm-construction wasn’t the big story at UW-Whitewater, but rather it was the federal lawsuit against former Chancellor Telfer and [then-current] Athletic Director Amy Edmonds.   Even in her mundane story of residence-construction, the Journal Sentinel‘s Karen Herzog got it wrong: the bigger story was an increasing number of out-of-state students (now about…

How Big Averts Bad

If it should be true that small-town Whitewater faces a choice between difficult times now or an extended decline before an out-of-town-led gentrification, that her decline will otherwise be slow but no less signficant as a result, that stakeholder (special interest) politics grips the city, and that this stakeholder politics is really an identity politics…

Plain-Spoken in a Small Town? Not Most Leaders

There’s a quaint – but false – notion that people in small towns are uncommonly plain-spoken, even blunt.  One sometimes sees examples of this in films or books, where residents are depicted as folksy straight-talkers (“shucks, I don’t cotton to no one abusing nobody,” etc.).  I’ve never heard anyone in Whitewater speak so colorfully, and I’ve…

That From Which Dreams Are Made

Wisconsin, like most states, publishes sets of scorecards measuring students’ progress. (The overwhelming majority of school districts – 91% – at least meet expectations. Our local district falls within this common group; a few particular schools are admirably above it.) Yesterday, the district announced the latest results, after the state’s Department of Public Instruction made them…

At Whitewater’s Common Council Meeting, 10.4.16

There are a few moments from last night’s Common Council meeting that I’ll consider briefly today. Budget.  It’s fall, and so for Whitewater’s local government that means a proposed budget rollout, and  Council sessions principally occupied with that subject through November. On efficiency of government services, City Manager Clapper remarked that one can expect municipal…

About a Survey 

I promised last week that I would write about a recent survey that seemed to rely on a skewed, unrepresentative sample. The survey and some printed accounts of it have been available, but the recording of the 6.6.16 meeting at which the results were initially presented does not seem to be available online for readers. …

The Masking Effect of Act 10 

We’ve had Act 10 for several years now, and during that time in no sector has that law been more discussed or felt than in K12 public education. Whitewater has avoided some of the Act 10 strife that has gripped other parts of the state, and that’s been to our advantage, whatever one thinks of…

Whitewater Chooses a New Administrator

This morning, the Whitewater Unified School District announced the selection of Dr. Mark Elworthy, currently administrator of the Wisconsin Heights School District, as Whitewater’s next district administrator.  One wishes him truly the very best in our community.  We have proud accomplishments, with some significant challenges ahead, but that work ahead is among the best work…