Mercer school board seeks unity

By TOM LAVENTURE

[email protected]

MERCER, Wis. — School boards need differences of opinion but should work together toward a common good, say new members of the Mercer Board of Education.

Two interim board members, Sue Loth and Jeff Nehring, were elected by the full board in late July. Both said that board communication and the students were their priorities.

“Sue, as a retired teacher in Racine, brings a real solid educational aspect to the board,” said Robert Davis, school board president. “Jeff has previous board experience and understands the operations side of the board, and is a pretty sharp guy with a good technical background.”

Nehring retired from dentistry after 40 years of practice in July. He is a previous Mercer School Board member and was chair when the school district built the new elementary school addition.

“I want to see the board get back to that atmosphere and accomplish some real change,” Nehring said. “If I want to make a change then I need to be on the board and then I will need two more people on the board to agree with me.”

Nehring served on the Grand View Hospital Board and was chair during the transition to Aspirus Health Care. He also served on an Aspirus board in Wausau that helped to coordinate the transition.

“It was a really good working board,” Nehring said. “When a board works together it gets a lot accomplished.”

Much of a board’s work is done in the committees, he said. Outside observers who don’t have the bigger picture often jump to conclusions, which is largely what happened here, he said.

“It’s been so divisive and the negativity didn’t do anything to improve the board or the atmosphere in town,” Nehring said.

Financial issues

When Mercer inadvertently levied about $21,000 more than authorized from local property taxes for debt payments in 2015-16, it resulted in a statutorily required penalty that zeroed the school district’s already small amount of general schools aid for 2016-17, said Benson Gardner, communications officer for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. The formula uses the previous year’s aid as the baseline to compute this current year’s aid, and the number has remained at zero for 2019-20.

“State law requires us to impose penalties to districts’ school aid in certain situations, even when the mistakes are inadvertent, which is not uncommon,” Gardner said.

In another issue, the DPI withheld $87,300 in state aid from the school district in 2017-18, and reached a $37,214 settlement in April, regarding $185,465 for 12 separate Fund 80 budget items that were declared ineligible as expenditures for community programs during the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years. The investigation found most items were mis-categorized but still appropriate expenditures for other funds, and three charges were eventually declared Fund 80 eligible.

Moving ahead

Concerned citizens getting together and holding a board accountable is important, Nehring said. But it’s just as important that perception reflect reality, he said.

“I think a group of people in the town, for whatever reason, thought there was a lot more going on than there was,” Nehring said. “When you are on a board you know what is going on more than someone who is not and doesn’t have a clue.”

He praised school board president Robert Davis for returning order to the board and communicating with the public. Now the board can concentrate on the challenges of working to provide students with the same opportunities as larger schools regarding technology and academics, Nehring said.

Davis said he was happy with the selection of the two interim board members. Nehring presents a professional board background and Loth is a celebrated educator, he said.

Both offer different experiences and skill sets, yet both are vital to building a dynamic and effective board that must make effective decisions on a variety of business and issues, he said.

There will be a school district audit getting underway soon, Davis said. The purpose of hiring an independent accounting firm to conduct an audit is to find out where improvements can be made and not about hoping to come out with high marks, he said.

“It they come in and say ‘you’re doing great,’ and don’t tell you how to do better then it’s a waste of money,” Davis said.

There were six applicants who stepped up to serve as interim members in response to the unusual occurrence of having two regular members resign prior to an election, he said.

“They were all outstanding candidates and we could have picked any number of combinations of them and they would have got the job done as well as the others,” Davis said. “I hope they all decide to run in April for the next full term.”

The two interim seats along with board member Micki Holmstrom’s seat are up for election in April, he said. The two candidates with the most votes will receive a three-year term and the third place candidate will earn a one-year term to ensure staggered elections in accordance to state law.