Verona Press The
Thursday, December 19, 2019 • Vol. 55, No. 31 • Verona, WI • Hometown USA • ConnectVerona.com • $1.25
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Leaving a better world behind
Verona Area School District
Photo by Neal Patten
Shedd Farley regularly offers group tours of the burial grounds of the Natural Path Sanctuary. He provided a tour for around a dozen people Nov. 14.
Photos by Kimberly Wethal
From left, teacher Cassondra Lee works with fifth graders Nevyn Emmanuelli and Piper Forrest Johnson on writing a script for school-wide announcements during the Junior Equity Team meeting on Friday, Dec. 13, at Sugar Creek Elementary School.
Problem solvers
KIMBERLY WETHAL Unified Newspaper Group
Fifth grader Keren Chavez Santiago was inspired by a friend to make Sugar Creek a better place. When that friend got into an argument with another student, Santiago helped
calm her down, she said. That experience, and the desire to help reduce bullying, was what prompted her to join Sugar Creek’s Junior Equity Team. Teacher Cassondra Lee started JET in 2015 when she was in her second year on the staff and was leading the school’s Equity Team. “My idea was that JET would be an extension of the work I was doing with other teachers and getting the kid feedback,” she said. From left, Keren Chavez Santiago, Elivia Kerkenbush and Tenley Sathoff work on English and Spanish versions of Turn to Equity/Page 14 their announcment script.
Facilities and schedules remain sticking points Administrators update board on middle school alignment KIMBERLY WETHAL Unified Newspaper Group
Two decades of site-based governance at the Verona Area School District’s two middle school have resulted in two different sets of syllabi, class descriptions, schedules and facility and equipment offerings. Administrators have found the
syllabi and class descriptions relatively easy to merge during the ongoing middle school alignment process, which is an ongoing effort to ensure equity among students at the different schools. The schedules and facility offerings, however, have proven to be far more complicated to rectify between the sites, principals told the school board Monday night, Dec. 16. A proposed unified schedule detailed at a board committee meeting Dec. 6 drew scorn from teachers and parents, prompting administrators to rethink the entire concept. Some parents complained the The
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schedule would cut elective programming like art and music, and teachers worried the plan would dilute their individual connections with students. The two sites will be structurally different after Badger Ridge and Core Knowledge’s move to the current high school building next fall, particularly given the access BRMS will have to amenities such as a pool and track field. Principals also pointed out that the sites have different equipment for their encore classes that don’t translate to the other building.
NEAL PATTEN Unified Newspaper Group
It’s been ten-and-a-half years since Verona resident and doctor Linda Farley died in June 2009. A long-time family medicine practitioner, she had arranged for her remains to be donated to science; however, they were not accepted, leaving her family scrambling for another option. “Mom did not have a Plan B,” Shedd Farley, Linda’s son, said. Shedd is the director of the Linda and Gene Farley Center for Peace, Justice and Sustainability, which Linda’s death formalized. The Center runs out of the Farley’s wooded home, built in the countryside near Verona in the Town of Springdale. Shedd said he wasn’t always into some of the “hippie things” his parents were into growing up, so he
didn’t expect to leave Denver after 38 years, where he worked as a contractor and homebuilder, to become director of the Center. In 2011, the Center became licensed and certified to provide natural burials, meaning the bodies are not embalmed and are rarely buried in a casket. Twenty-five acres out of the 43-acre property was zoned for the cemetery, renamed the Natural Path Sanctuary. It was the first “green” cemetery in Dane County and is one of only around 70 nationwide, Shedd said. He runs the Center off revenue from cemetery. The center is operated as a nonprofit, while the cemetery is separately incorporated and funded. When Linda’s husband Gene died in November 2013, he was also given a green burial. However, to the dismay of his children, he could not be buried next to Linda, due to complications with how the cemetery had been zoned. While not feeling good about it, the children had no choice but to bury him a few hundred feet away from her.
Turn to Sanctuary/Page 7
Inside Wildcats grind their way past Cardinals Page 10
Turn to Alignment:/Page 7
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Sugar Creek students brainstorm solutions as part of Junior Equity Team
Natural Path Sanctuary one of few ‘green burial’ sites in nation