Stoughton
Thursday, February 21, 2019 • Vol. 137, No. 31 • Stoughton, WI • ConnectStoughton.com • $1.25
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Courier Hub The
City of Stoughton
Demolition moratorium gets lifted RDA now has authority to knock down the blacksmith shop ALEXANDER CRAMER Unified Newspaper Group
Photo by Justin Loewen
A snowy stroll
From left, Ellen Hebron, of Madison, and William Gilles, of Stoughton, walk their dogs through a trail in Viking Park on Sunday, Feb. 17. The Stoughton area received close to six inches of snowfall throughout the day on Sunday.
Stoughton Area School District
Going ‘Global’ at SHS SCOTT DE LARUELLE Unified Newspaper Group
Already well-known for its famous multicultural connections with the well-traveled Norwegian Dancers, Stoughton High School will be getting global right in their own school next week. Looking to find ways to connect students with global learning opportunities, the Stoughton Area School District will host a group of volunteer guest speakers during its first “Go Global Conference” on Tuesday, Feb. 26 at the high school. Eight 25-minute sessions are scheduled, including an African drum ensemble, an administrator who’s lived
abroad, a graduate who studied overseas in the Peace Corps and an SHS alumni who started his own music discovery and streaming platform. And of course, the Norwegian Dancers will participate, teaching some “mini-sessions” for their classmates on some of their dances, organizer Stephanie Krentz told the Hub last week. “They were really excited to do that,” she said. “They don’t really do a lot of performances or work with their own student body.” Krentz, who taught German at SHS for six years before moving to a district mentoring role this year, said she’s often asked why learning languages is important for high schoolers, and wanted to find a way to make sure “people understand value of why learning language is important or even just learning about other cultures.” She was thinking of a way to bring in
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people from the community to help students “see world languages being used in daily lives outside of the classroom,” when Krenz heard the goal of the latest round of the district’s “innovation grants” for faculty ideas. “(It was) “improving student achievement, engaging students in their own learning and specifically fostering a culture of collaboration between our school and community,” she said. “When I heard that I was like, ‘Check, check, check,’” she said. Krentz didn’t just want to make it about German, or Spanish – the two foreign languages taught at the school. But she did want local connections, seeking out people with Stoughton or Dane County connections who had either worked or studied abroad or worked in an area that requires “knowledge or awareness of other countries and
Turn to Global/Page 16
Turn to RDA/Page 14
State taking another look at Hwy. 51 Environmental study of busy highway is back on SCOTT DE LARUELLE Unified Newspaper Group
After abandoning a long-term study of U.S. Hwy. 51 from McFarland to Stoughton, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation has restarted it. The goal is to see
whether new information could affect planning for the well-traveled 18-mile stretch of road. In a study released this month to the Transportation Projects Commission on major highway studies, Wisconsin DOT officials said the delayed environmental assessment (EA) for that part of Hwy. 51 is back “in progress.” According to the study,
Turn to Hwy. 51/Page 16
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Grant helps bring world focus to Stoughton Feb. 26
The moratorium that has been preventing the demolition of the blacksmith shop is over. On a 9-1 vote, Tuesday, Feb. 12, The Stoughton Common Council cleared the way for the Redevelopment Authority to act as it sees fit Veregin with the century-old building, lifting the demolition ban it
imposed in 2017 that had effectively scuttled the RDA’s previous development plans. The authority has changed all but one member since then, and Roger Springman, chair of the “new” RDA, advocated for the change during the public comment portion of the meeting. The RDA had approved of the move at a special meeting Tuesday, Jan. 29. The blacksmith shop was built in 1910 and is the last of six buildings in what is known as the Highway Trailers complex, used by a variety of companies since 1905, when the Moline Plow Company opened its Mandt Division here. The city razed the others last year after closing the street next to them