Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 36. Sunrise is 7:19 and sunset is 4:21 for 9 hours 2 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 10.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1864, the Battle of Nashville ends as the Union Army of the Cumberland under General George H. Thomas routs and destroys the Confederate Army of Tennessee under General John Bell Hood, ending that army’s effectiveness as a combat unit.
At long last, it is Wisconsin law that schools must notify parents promptly of sexual misconduct toward children in the school’s care:
Wisconsin schools must now notify a student’s parent or guardian promptly if their child is the alleged victim of a sexual offense by a school employee or volunteer, under a bill signed into law this month.
Gov. Tony Evers signed the Republican-led bill into law Dec. 9. The new requirements set a timeline for public, charter and private schools to notify parents when allegations of sexual misconduct by school staff involve their children.
A co-sponsor of the measure, Rep. David Steffen, R-Howard, said in a statement the bill was “eminently necessary” because the state previously had no specific timeline to notify parents of such incidents.
Under the new law, schools must provide notice no later than 5 p.m. the same day if a report is received during school hours, or by noon the next calendar day if the report is received after school hours.
See Kayla Huynh, Schools must notify parents of sexual misconduct under new Wisconsin law, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 16, 2025.
In a well-ordered school district, officials would promptly, as a matter of moral obligation, report alleged injuries to the parents of affected children even without any legal requirement to do so. Wisconsin institutions and officials are too often lacking, so the law must enter to compensate as best as it can for deficiencies of individual character. There will still be efforts to evade legal responsibility as there have been efforts to evade moral responsibility.
Some officials, however, will be persuaded under law to act rightly on this fundamental duty where they would not have done so otherwise.
In the video below, Kristin Brey addresses the companion issue of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s many failures to track cases and inform communities of misconduct: