Hybrid teaching fuels crowded school race

The Port Washington-Saukville School District’s approach to educating students during the pandemic is helping fuel a rare five-person race for two School Board seats.

On the ballot for what will need to be a Feb. 16 primary election are incumbents Brenda Fritsch, who serves as board president, and Aaron Paulin and challengers Robert Brooks, Rob Clearwater and Danielle Mayer. 

Four candidates will advance from the primary to the Apr. 6 general election. The two candidates who receive the most votes will win seats representing the City of Port Washington on the School Board. 

Brooks, the son of state Rep. Rob Brooks, R-Saukville, said he decided to run when the School Board agreed to begin the school year with a mix of in-person and online instruction.

That hybrid model, which the district continues to operate under, has become the target of parents, including Brooks, who are calling for a return to full-time, in-person instruction.

Brooks, 31, was one of more than 100 parents who attended a School Board meeting Monday and told board members that his son, a sixth-grader who is typically an A-student, has struggled under a system in which he attends classes only two days a week and receives little in-person instruction even in his most challenging subjects.

“It was my son who was begging me, ‘Please, do something about this,’” Brooks said. “He’s always been such a fantastic student and this year he’s just struggling.”

Mayer, a 23-year-old teacher in the Cedarburg School District, said students need to be in school full-time, and while her goal has long been to serve as a School Board member, the controversy surrounding the district’s continued hybrid approach to teaching motivated her to run now. 

She said Monday’s meeting illustrates the need for leadership on the board.

“The board was unprepared for the questions they knew they were going to receive from parents,” she said. “They (board members) were there to have a discussion about returning to school full time, but there was no discussion.”

Brooks also said the board needs new leadership but he hopes Paulin, who has questioned the district’s hybrid approach to education and on Monday was one of two School Board members to explicitly call for a return to full-time classroom instruction, retains his seat.

“My sights are set on Brenda Fritsch,” he said.

Fritsch said at Monday’s meeting she is an “advocate for in-person learning” and was planning to ask the board to consider increasing the amount of in-person instruction before parents began calling for change.

Under Fritsch’s leadership, the board decided in summer to adopt the hybrid education model under which high school and middle school students are divided into two groups with one group attending in-person classes on Mondays and Tuesdays and the other on Thursdays and Fridays. Students receive online instruction on the days they are not in school.

The system effectively reduces the student populations in the district’s two largest schools, allows for social distancing and, school officials have said, gives the district the best chance of averting a shutdown due to Covid-19 outbreaks.

Students in the district’s three elementary schools, where there is more room to separate students, attend in-person classes four days a week.

But schools through the area have proven to be relatively immune to widespread outbreaks and parents in the Port-Saukville School District who supported or tolerated a part-time return to in-person learning in September are now criticizing the board for being slow to transition to full-time in-person instruction. 

Brooks is a graduate of Port Washington High School and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who works in construction management.

Mayer is also a Port High graduate and has a degree in education from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

Clearwater could not be reached for comment.

School Board member Doug Miller, who also called for a return to full-time classroom instruction at Monday’s meeting, is running unopposed to retain his seat representing the Village of Saukville on the board.