A member of the Sevastopol school board reflects on the year as president of the WASB

The Sevastopol school board frequently gets inside information about state funding and problems from one of its longtime members.

Sue Todey, a retired educator, has just completed her term as president of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards (WASB) and is now its past president. She also continues to serve as Chair of the Board of CESA 7, an association of 30 schools in northeastern Wisconsin.

Sevastopol Superintendent Kyle Luedtke said Todey’s service on state and regional councils helps him and the district stay informed of issues and in touch with state and local lawmakers. He said she also provides an independent voice to the WASB on issues affecting Wisconsin students, drawing on her years of experience as a counselor and administrator in Wisconsin schools.

“She has always been a huge advocate for children and children’s programs, and helping children get what they need,” Luedtke said.

Todey returned to her parents’ farm and the 120-acre farm after she and her husband retired in the early 2000s. She has been involved in various phases of education for over 50 years. She began teaching at age 21 and worked as a school counselor and administrator in the Green Bay School District. While semi-retired, she taught at the university level and worked as a consultant for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction on anti-bullying measures and drug prevention education.

Todey has also served on the Sevastopol school board since 2006.

“I didn’t retire well,” she says. “I needed to have something to do, and I thought I had experiences and skills that would benefit the school district.”

Over the past two years, WASB has diverted much of its attention to helping school board members deal with the issues they face: complicated health protocols for students and rocky relationships with district residents and school board members. parents.

Todey is speaking at the WASB convention this winter as she completes a term as president.

“It was a tough time in education,” Todey said. “Certainly people have taken a great interest on all sides in educational matters – masking and vaccinations and critical race theory.”

The association has offered school board members numerous webinars and training sessions on community engagement, and has provided counseling to individual school board members who have been threatened.

“When we released the vaccine as a country, I think we thought we were on the right track to get back to normal, but it didn’t work out that way when we got the Delta variant and the variant Omicron,” Todey said. “Personally, I thought more people would rush to get vaccinated. Not everyone felt that. »

At the Sevastopol meetings, Todey voted for both tighter and looser health protocols, and she supported decisions that don’t make all parents happy.

“It was difficult,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of division – not just in our state, but in our country – and that’s something we just have to get over.”

At the state convention this winter, Todey spoke about what some students are doing to fight divisiveness through anti-hate groups that post signs and work with younger kids — “all to help them to understand that this hatred is not good,” she said.

People learn to hate each other, Todey said, and schools play a role in teaching students to love one another.

“I think that’s really the challenge we face now as educators: to help our children so that we can create a kinder and gentler society than the one we live in now,” she said. .

Also in the wake of the pandemic, school boards and educators must address the learning gaps that have arisen when young people had online or hybrid learning models or missed parts of the curriculum. Then the next big task for Todey and CESA 7 representatives will be to hold sessions in April to brief new school board members on laws such as the Open Meetings Act, as well as other related issues. the responsibilities of the board.

She said she continues to reach out to lawmakers to help area schools receive more state and federal funding and more support for student mental health needs.

“Here in Sevastopol, we don’t get a lot of general financial support from the state; we get categorical [program] help,” Todey said. “Because we are wealthy in property and poor in income, we are not eligible – any more than Gibraltar or Washington Island.”

She is part of the Fair Aid Coalition, a group including school districts such as Sevastopol that do not receive this general aid, and has been successful in getting more funding for transportation.

“We’re getting federal funds, but those will end,” she said. “We need to ensure that we have the necessary funding at all times. »

She also advocates for competitive salaries for teachers to continue to attract high quality educators. Todey said high-demand positions compete with places like Green Bay and Appleton, but Door County also has high housing costs and fewer social events for young educators.


Source link

Comments are closed.