Thursday, December 6, 2018 • Vol. 54, No. 29 • Verona, WI • Hometown USA • ConnectVerona.com • $1.25
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Verona Press The
Verona Area School District
from equality to equity District begins shifting its budgeting, prioritizing to favor identified needs
SCOTT GIRARD
Three meetings and seven-and-a-half hours down, the committee that will consider new Verona Area School District attendance boundaries was set to see its first options this week. The 29-member Attendance Area Advisory Committee was scheduled to meet Wednesday, Dec. 5, and at that meeting, consultant Mark Roffers planned to offer the first two of many options the committee will evaluate in the coming months. “There will be more than two (eventually), but it will take us a while to learn how to read an option, to apply criteria, have a discussion, e t c . ,” c o n s u l t a n t D r ew
Unified Newspaper Group
I
f you were to give the same size bicycle to a 6-foot-tall man and his 3-foot-tall daughter, one of them would likely be unable to ride, or at least uncomfortable doing so. That’s a simplified example of an “inequitable” distribution of resources. The Verona Area School District now hopes to bring just the opposite – equity – to its budgeting and resource allocation process, which has been based on “equality” for as long as anyone can remember. In the past, school budgets were based almost entirely on the number of students at a given school – and until a few years ago in VASD, each school got to take its allocation and split it up however it saw fit, whether that included more social workers than another school or an assistant principal position others did not have. Two years ago, with district initiatives like personalized learning becoming increasingly complicated to run with individual site governance, the district moved toward centralizing its budgeting. That was designed to ensure students all have more similar opportunities regardless of their site and that teachers are trained in similar areas. Now, district officials plan to take it a step further, with “equity-based resource allocation.” The idea is to fund programming and staffing and allocate time based on a school’s or classroom’s needs, rather than simply on its number of students. “If we gave every student the same thing, you wouldn’t see success in all our students,” school board president Noah Roberts said. “You would expect the same thing for our schools; if you gave each school the same thing, you can’t expect them all to be successful.” Administrators and school board members expect the planned threeyear phase-in of the change to be a
Inside DPI approves Aug. 23 start date Page 20 Howlick explained at a Nov. 26 committee meeting. The group is expected to recommend up to three options for the full school board to consider next spring. The new maps for elementary and middle schools would go into effect in the 2020-21 school year, when the new high school opens and lower-level schools shift into repurposed, larger buildings. While waiting for the maps to be created, the boundary committee has been discussing a variety of topics that could relate to its choices. At its most recent
Turn to Boundary/Page 20
Library eliminates late fees Move follows lead of other libraries KIMBERLY WETHAL Unified Newspaper Group
Turn to Equity/Page 7
Photo by Jim Ferolie
Sugar Creek Elementary School students fill the hallways as the school day begins Dec. 4. A new budgeting process at the Verona Area School District will begin to direct additional resources based on identified strategic needs, and at Sugar Creek, that could mean more help with English Language Arts, where the school has struggled. The
Consultant planned to present at Dec. 5 meeting Unified Newspaper Group
SCOTT GIRARD
Verona Press
Committee prepares for boundary options
As of the first of this month, users of the Verona Public Library won’t be charged for returning rented items late. It’s a concept that has been talked about by library staff and members of the library board since earlier this year at the beginning of budget discussions, director Stacey Burkart said. She said they hope the change will encourage more people to use the library and eliminate barriers for people who are disadvantaged financially. Burkart said the fees for late items, at $.10 a day, didn’t work in deterring people from not bringing checked out items back – it instead worked as a mechanism for keeping people out of the library altogether. “It’s gaining momentum
for libraries to go fine-free,” she said. “If you can afford to pay a fine, then it doesn’t really motivate you to bring the book back. If you can’t – if it presents an economic barrier – then you stop using the library.” Other municipalities in the county, including Middleton and Monona, have their libraries operate finefree. With the elimination of late fees, Burkart said, the library is essentially giving patrons an “extended grace period” before an item is labeled as “lost” 30 days after the return date, in which the item would need to be repurchased, and the renter charged the full price to do so. Revenue from late fees only generated around one percent of the library’s operating budget, Burkart said. The amount of money generated from overdue fines is around $20,000, but she said that number varies
Turn to Late/Page 5
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