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Verona Press The
Thursday, January 17, 2019 • Vol. 54, No. 35 • Verona, WI • Hometown USA • ConnectVerona.com • $1.25
Verona Area School District
Verona Area School District
Split grades plan gets highest rank Committee begins to refine its top boundary options SCOTT GIRARD Unified Newspaper Group
Photo by Scott Girard
Michael Hyland, who will compete in a statewide competition Saturday, Jan. 26, makes some adjustments to his robot after giving it a test run.
‘Solve the problem’ VAHS robotics class offers engineering lessons
Unified Newspaper Group
Rick Boehm’s classroom in the basement of Verona Area High School might as well have been an office on a recent Thursday afternoon. One student asked where the coffee was, another asked to change the radio station. All of it while Boehm’s 15 students put together a robot as part of the robotics course created in
fall 2016 at the school. While student Michael Hyland and a trio of teacher’s aides for the class are the only group among the students competing in an upcoming statewide robotics tournament, the entire class is getting the lesson of engineering, designing and constructing a robot with a specific task – in this case, to score points through methods like turning flags or throwing balls. Hyland was excited to get to the
Jan. 26 VEX Robotics Competition Turning Point competition in Fond du Lac, but said it had been a “difficult few weeks” of finalizing his robot. “There’s been points where the connections won’t stay on between the claw and the robot, so I’ve had to work through that,” Hyland said. The semester has tested more than their building skills, as Boehm had
Turn to Robotics/Page 7
Verona recognized as active community Bike and ped improvements among reasons for designation KIMBERLY WETHAL Unified Newspaper Group
The City of Verona has been recognized by a statewide program as an active community. The distinction means Verona as a community is
dedicated to being active and living healthy lifestyles, said city planning director Adam Sayre, whose office submitted the application for the city. “I think it’s just another tool we’re going to have that we’ll be able to show people we’re being recognized for what we’re doing, and we want to continue to be recognized,” he said. The Common Council and the Verona Area Chamber of Commerce received the designation from The
Verona Press
Wisconsin Active Together earlier this month. The Wisconsin Active Together program, housed at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, is a statewide network of partners and agencies that seeks to promote walking, bicycling and being active to improve the health of people in their community. Rob Fontella, communications manager for healthTIDE, one of the
Wisconsin Active Together’s partners, told the Press each of the 14 communities to get the distinction this year is different and has earned the distinction through different programs and policies. “The effort is about promoting, improving access and making it safer to be active,” he said in an email. “That can mean walking, biking, access to parks,
Turn to Active/Page 5
The five boundary options averaged the following number of higher rankings when tested one-on-one against the other options by committee members: A: 2.15 B: .55 C: 1.3 D: 3.35 E: 2.65 expectation of another elementary school being built in the mid-2020s. Those two, presented Dec. 19 and Jan. 8, will be refined at upcoming committee meetings that could last through March, with
Turn to Boundaries/Page 8
City of Verona
No action on assessor Council considers new firms after mistake raises taxes JIM FEROLIE Verona Press editor
The city did not take action Monday, Jan. 14, on plans to get a new assessor. But it appears to be coming. After a 30-minute closed session, the Common Council had only one comment, Mayor Luke Diaz’s assertion that “when action is taken, we will be making a public announcement.”
Pa u l M u s s e r r e m a i n s under contract with the city, as he has for more than a decade, first as the city’s commercial assessor, then as both commercial and residential assessor. But he angered some alders with a mistake that caused excess local taxes – more than $100 on average – to be diverted to a tax-increment financing district with no certainty of how or when it will be returned to taxpayers. Musser’s contract had been renewed just last summer, and in the upcoming
Turn to Assessor/Page 3
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SCOTT GIRARD
A plan that would split two elementary schools into grades K-2 and 3-5 came out as the highest ranking among five options presented to the committee reviewing new attendance area boundaries Jan. 8. Option D, as it is called, would split the grades between Sugar Creek and Country View elementary schools beginning in fall 2020, when Sugar Creek moves as a result of the new high school being built. It ranked above a plan that would direct much of the projected growth over the next several years to Country View and Glacier Edge elementary schools with the
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