Madison, Wisconsin high school students march on the Capitol on Friday, Dec. 20 | Photo by Daphne Cooper
It was a brilliant, snowy Friday, the last day of school before winter break, as more than 100 students from high schools across Madison converged inside the Capitol. They gathered around the 30-foot balsam fir festooned with handmade ornaments, a model train chugging around the track at the base of the tree. At first it looked like a festive scene, but as the students poured into the first floor of the rotunda, then filled the second- and third-floor balconies, their shouting drowned out a group of Christmas carolers, who retreated, their songs giving way to chants of “No more silence! End gun violence!”
High school students protest gun violence in the Capitol | Photo by Ruth Conniff
The Madison teens showed up to express their grief and outrage over the deaths this week of a 14-year-old student, her teacher and a gun-wielding 15-year-old girl who opened fire Monday in a classroom at the small private Abundant Life Christian School on Madison’s east side. It was the city’s first school shooting but, incredibly, the 323rd in the nation this year.
Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children and teens in the U.S. Shouting, chanting, demanding to be heard, the crowd of children came to the Capitol Friday demanding that we wake up and do something about this appalling fact.
Our nation is an outlier, with a rate of gun violence that dwarfs other large, high-income countries. Firearm homicides here are 33 times higher than in Australia and 77 times higher than in Germany, according to a report from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington medical school. Not surprisingly, firearm injuries tend to be more frequent in places where people have easy access to firearms, according to a 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
What other country in the world could live with the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, where 20 little children between 6 and 7 years old and six adult staff were gunned down, and respond by making no significant restrictions on firearms?
Danny Johnson | Photo by Ruth Conniff
“My parents constantly talk about how, when Sandy Hook happened, they thought that would be the end of it,” said Danny Johnson, a first-year student at Madison West High School who joined the 3-mile march to the Capitol on Friday, carrying a sign scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper that said, “Thoughts and prayers until it’s your own child.”
“To constantly have to go through it — we shouldn’t have to be here. We should be in school not having to worry about it at all,” Johnson added.
Hanging over balconies and leaning against marble pillars, teens held up handmade signs that said; “Enough!” “You write your policies on a carpet of our dead bodies,” and “Graduations not funerals.”
In Wisconsin, the rate of gun deaths increased 45% from 2013 to 2022, compared to a 36% increase nationwide, according to the Giffords Law Center.
Every year since he was elected in 2018, Gov. Tony Evers and Democrats in the state Legislature have tried in vain to get Republican cooperation on ending the state’s current exemption from background checks for private gun sales. A proposed “red flag” law that would allow police or family members to seek an extreme risk protection order in court to take guns from gun owners who are found to be a danger to themselves or others has also gone nowhere. Both of these measures are broadly popular with voters across the political spectrum. Somehow that doesn’t seem to matter.
After this week’s school shooting. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos released a statement saying, “Today’s tragedy is shocking, senseless and heartbreaking. My thoughts and prayers are with the students, parents and faculty who will have to live with the trauma and grief of this day for the rest of their lives.” But Vos stopped short of saying he would make any effort whatsoever to protect kids and teachers from being shot to death at school. That phrase “thoughts and prayers,” rightly derided by the students who protested at the Capitol on Friday, is a pathetic substitute for action.
“Last year it was 12 years since Sandy Hook, 25 years since Columbine, and all our politicians can say from their cushy seats is that they’re sending out their thoughts and prayers about the leading cause of death for children in America!” yelled Ian Malash, a senior at Vel Phillips Memorial High School in Madison, pacing around the tree in the center of the rotunda. “We’re showing them right now and we are going to continue to show them that we are done with thoughts and prayers. We will make change happen because our lives depend on it.”
Vos, apparently recovered from his heartbreak over Monday’s tragedy and back to his old snarky self by Wednesday, mounted a robust defense of the status quo on X, retweeting a post from Wisconsin Right Now that mocked Democrats who “politicize this tragedy with cheap talking points.” The post claimed that, since it’s already illegal for a 15-year-old to possess a handgun, it’s ridiculous to connect the recent shooting to any effort to change gun laws.
Sen. Kelda Roys speaks to high school students in the Capitol Rotunda | Photo by Ruth Conniff
But, as state Sen. Kelda Roys told the crowd on Friday, “We know that states that have passed gun safety laws like background checks, like red flag laws … they see gun deaths and firearm injuries go down. We can do that here in Wisconsin, too. We just need to change the minds or change the legislators — and the judges, too, by the way.”
“My generation and the people in this building have let you down,” Rick Abegglen, the parent of a West High School daughter who helped organize the protest, told the crowd in the Capitol. “I am so proud of each and every one of you for standing up for yourselves. A few moments ago I saw somebody close the doors of the Senate because they did not want to hear your voices. Think about it.”
As he spoke, the students yelled louder, their voices bouncing off the marble walls, becoming harder and harder to ignore.
Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes delivers updates about the Dec. 16, 2024 school shooting at Abundant Life Christian School on Madison's east side. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Just days after he was thrust into the national spotlight following the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School that killed two people, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes was announced as the new chief of the Seattle Police Department.
Barnes’ acceptance of the job in Seattle comes as the Madison police are still investigating the shooting on Monday and the motives behind the 15-year-old girl’s attack. Authorities have discovered that the girl was in contact with a 20-year-old California man who was planning his own attack on a government building.
Since the shooting, Barnes has been an outspoken critic of hardening the defenses of community schools. At his first press conference after the shooting, he was asked if the school had metal detectors and responded that schools shouldn’t have such measures installed.
“I’m not aware that the school had metal detectors, nor should schools have metal detectors,” he said. “It’s a school. It’s a safe space.”
Prior to the shooting, Barnes had been named a finalist for the Seattle job.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell noted in a statement that Barnes has successfully brought crime down in Madison and promised to continue to work to combat gun violence.
“Earlier this week, under tragic circumstances, the nation received its introduction to Chief Shon Barnes. We all saw firsthand what our team has known since we began this recruitment process — that Chief Barnes possesses the impressive leadership capabilities, compassionate approach, and dedication to effective police work needed to continue moving our Police Department forward,” Harrell said. “I’ve spoken with Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway to express my condolences and support as they process this week’s tragedy and to share my continued commitment to fighting for solutions to the gun violence epidemic that impacts every corner of our country through our shared work with the U.S. Conference of Mayors.”
Barnes took over as chief in Madison in early 2021 as the city responded to an increase in violent crime and the protests against police violence that occurred across the country in 2020. During his tenure, Barnes has overseen the department’s effort to equip officers with body cameras.
He was also named a finalist for the chief jobs in Chicago and San Jose, California, despite telling Isthmus in 2021 that he was committed to Madison “for the long haul.”
Rhodes-Conway said in a statement that Barnes’ collaborative approach was important to the establishment of Dane County’s Public Health Violence Prevention Unit and the Madison Fire Department’s CARES program, noting that the city is “safer and more resilient” because of his work.
“I would like to congratulate Chief Shon Barnes on his new opportunity in Seattle and thank him for his service to Madison,” Rhodes-Conway said. “The Chief has been a steady, forward-thinking leader throughout his tenure and he will be greatly missed.”
She also commended his work this week responding to the school shooting.
“The tragedy this week has been all-consuming, and we still have much healing to do as a community,” she said. “I’m grateful that the Madison Police Department responded to this unthinkable crisis with the utmost professionalism and compassion. Chief Barnes was at the center of coordinating local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies during an unprecedented moment. He did so admirably.”
The Madison Police and Fire Commission is responsible for finding Barnes’ replacement. Rhodes-Conway said in the coming weeks the commission will outline a search plan and during the recruitment process an interim chief will be named.
Several hundred people gathered on the Capitol Square in Madison Tuesday evening for a vigil following a school shooting Monday that left three dead and injured six other people. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
A day after a student killed two people, injured six others and took her own life at a Madison private school, public officials and community members mourned and processed their own trauma from the devastating violence.
“It is OK to ask for what you need to take care of your own mental health,” said Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway at a vigil on Madison’s Capitol Square Tuesday evening. “Please. Please. Let us be a community where it is okay to ask for help. Let us be a community where, when we see someone who needs help, that we are the first to extend our hands and to offer resources where they are needed. Let us be a community that takes care of each other. That is where our focus is right now — on caring for everyone who has been impacted by this gun violence.”
The vigil was organized by the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County. “We come together to begin the healing journey for our children and to support one another in this face of another school shooting that has hit our community,” said Michael Johnson, the organization’s president. “Let us remind each other that we are loved, that we are valued and we are not alone in this difficult time.”
“Violence in our community is preventable,” said state Rep. Sheila Stubbs (D-Madison). “We must not stand silent, but instead be moved to action.” She quoted Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights activist: “At the end of the day, we must go forward with hope and not backwards by fear and division.”
The U.S. and Wisconsin flags are at half staff through Dec. 22 in commemoration of those killed and wounded in Monday’s school shooting in Madison. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
Elected officials have united in expressing grief at the shooting. Following through on his announcement Monday, Gov. Tony Evers signed an executive order Tuesday morning calling for the U.S. and Wisconsin flags to be flown at half staff on all state buildings through Sunday, Dec. 22, as well as on the date of each victim’s funeral.
In the well of the U.S. House Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, flanked by a bipartisan group of six of Wisconsin’s eight House members, led a moment of silence in recognition of those affected by the shooting.
“These were innocent lives, innocent victims of senseless violence, and we mourn their loss with their families and loved ones and the entire Abundant Life Community,” Pocan said. He thanked law enforcement, first responders and health care workers who went to the scene or treated the victims. He emphasized as well that not just the dead and wounded, but the school community, its students, staff and parents, are all victims.
Pocan, like many Democratic lawmakers, has long been an outspoken advocate for tougher gun laws aimed at curbing gun violence. He alluded to that cause in his House speech, saying, “We must do better and we must turn these moments of silence into moments of action.”
But Pocan demurred from discussing specific policy talking points.
At a WisPolitics panel, Assembly Democratic leader Rep. Greta Neubauer cited direct policy changes that Democrats in the Legislature have tried in vain to pass over the last several years, only to be blocked by large Republican majorities: red flag laws that enable authorities to take guns from people perceived to be dangerous and universal background checks on all gun purchases. With a narrower GOP majority in both houses, she said, she hopes measures such as those could advance in the session starting in January.
Meanwhile, on the same panel, incoming Republican Senate President Mary Felzkowski highlighted concerns ranging from violent entertainment to social media — rather than firearms — as potential targets for regulation to reduce gun violence.
In atelevision interview, Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) told Emilee Fannon of TV station CBS 58 that he would support a request by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul for $2.3 million in the state’s 2025-27 budget to continue permanent funding for the Office of School Safety in the Wisconsin Department of Justice. The office provides K-12 schools with resources to improve security measures and trains school staff on handling traumatic events and crisis prevention and response. It also runs a round-the-clock tip line.
The office became a partisan flashpoint in the Legislature’s 2023-25 budget deliberations after Republicans rejected funding and Democratic lawmakers attacked their decision. The state DOJ subsequently extended its operation by redirecting $1.3 million in federal pandemic relief funds.
In the hours after the shooting, elected officials were unanimous in their expressions of grief while dividing along party lines in their policy responses.
“Today’s tragedy is shocking, senseless and heartbreaking,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said Monday.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the students, parents and faculty who will have to live with the trauma and grief of this day for the rest of their lives,” he said. “There are no words to adequately express condolences to those who have lost loved ones or to express gratitude for the first responders who were on scene for this violence.”
The statement made no reference either for or against legislation to address gun violence.
Democratic lawmakers weren’t so reticent.
“Right now, it’s hard to think of a greater moral failing as a nation and society than our inaction and unwillingness to keep our children safe from gun violence,” said Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison). “We do not have to accept this as an ordinary part of life. No other country does. Indeed – guns are the number one cause of death for American children, and that is a policy choice.”
At a news conference hours after the shooting Monday, Rhodes-Conway largely kept her focus on trauma and healing. “I am on record that I think we need to do better in our country and our community to prevent gun violence,” she said, adding that solutions should be the work of the whole community. A little later, she added: “But first and foremost, what needs to be a priority for all of us is supporting our young people, and that is where our community’s attention needs to turn at this point in time.”
And at Tuesday night’s vigil, she kept the attention on those who had immediately responded to the crisis. “Our community showed up in a big way, and is still continuing to show up,” Rhodes-Conway said. “Ultimately, that’s what gives me hope.”
Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes delivers updates about the Dec. 16, 2024 school shooting at Abundant Life Christian School on Madison's east side. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
This story was updated on Monday at 9:39 p.m.
Three people are dead and another six are in the hospital after a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School on Madison’s east side Monday morning. The shooter, who was a student at the school, is among the dead, according to Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes.
Two of the injured victims, both students, remain in critical condition while the other four have non-life threatening injuries, Barnes said at a mid-afternoon press conference.
Barnes identified the shooter at a Monday night press conference as Natalie Rupnow, 15, who went by the name “Samantha,” and said she appeared to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Gov. Tony Evers issued a statement decrying the shootings and announced he would order flags to fly half-staff across the state through Sunday, Dec. 22.
“As a father, a grandfather, and as governor, it is unthinkable that a kid or an educator might wake up and go to school one morning and never come home. This should never happen, and I will never accept this as a foregone reality or stop working to change it,” Evers said.
“Today my focus is on supporting these families and kids and the Abundant Life community, and the state stands ready to support them and the efforts of local law enforcement through what will undoubtedly be difficult days ahead.”
Police responded to the shooting at the K-12 private school shortly before 11 a.m., Barnes said. While clearing the building, officers found the person they believe to be responsible already dead, along with the other two people who were killed, one a teacher and the other a student. No officers fired their weapons during the incident.
Police searched a home on Madison’s North Side late Monday afternoon and evening and said the search was in connection with the shooting.
The shooter used a handgun, Barnes said. Her family was cooperating in the investigation, but there was no immediate information about what the individual’s motives may have been.
“You ask me about why, but I don’t know why, and I felt like if we did know why, we could stop these things from happening,” Barnes said.
In a statement, President Joe Biden called the shooting “shocking and unconscionable” and urged Congress to enact “Universal background checks. A national red flag law. A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”
Biden was briefed earlier Monday about the shooting according to the White House press pool.
At an earlier news conference, Barnes lamented the incident and its impact on the school and the community.
“I’m feeling a little dismayed now, so close to Christmas, every child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever,” Barnes said. “These types of trauma don’t just go away. We need to figure out how to piece together what exactly happened right now. My heart is heavy for my community. My heart is heavy for Madison. We have to come together as a community and figure out what happened here and make sure that it doesn’t happen at any other place that should be a refuge for students in our community.”
Families of students showed up at the school before noon and at mid-afternoon were still lined up in their cars down Buckeye Road on Madison’s East Side waiting to be reunited with their children. Officials said they would not release information about the victims until families had been notified.
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway emphasized the community-wide impact of the incident.
“This is a whole of government response,” Rhodes-Conway said. “It is not just police and fire. It is not just the city of Madison, and we have folks from all around the country, we have folks from multiple agencies engaged in both the initial immediate response and the ongoing support.”
She and Dane County Executive Melissa Agard emphasized the importance and availability of mental health assistance to anyone who may have been touched by the incident.
“If anyone needs mental health support as a result of this incident and the coverage of it, I encourage them to reach out” via the 9-8-8 emergency mental health line, which takes calls and text messages, Rhodes-Conway said. “It is incredibly important that we take care of our community in this very difficult time.”
“To all of those who are grieving in our community, please know that you’re not alone,” Agard said. “Dane County stands with you. We’re here to support you in any way possible — please reach out and ask for help.”
Barnes said he has been in contact with officials at the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI.
Although the Madison Police Department had earlier reported five deaths in the shooting, spokesperson Stephanie Fryer said that was based on information from the hospital where the victims were taken. Hospital personnel later updated the number of deaths to three people, she said.
This story has been updated with new information from the Madison police as well as city and Dane County officials.
As 2024 comes to close, it’s the perfect time to reflect on new beginnings. Jennifer Vobis was recognized for her exceptional work as the 2022 Transportation Director of the Year, and she continued pursuing excellence in her role as executive transportation director at Clark County School District (CCSD) in Nevada.
In her “Day in the Life” video, she helped prepare her transportation team the 2024-2025 school year and shared a heartfelt farewell as retired from her position at CCSD. Tune in for a behind the scenes look at the process of prepping for a new school year, interviews with CCSD transportation staff and lots of smiles shared with Jennifer and her team.
“My time at CCSD transportation department was invaluable,” Vobis told STN.
“During my tenure, I grew both professionally and personally. I hold deep gratitude for colleagues and staff for their hard work and dedication. I wish only the best to those who continue the important work of transporting students. The work they do is critical and under-appreciated.”
Vobis helped to create and define the new transportation lead position for Amber Rideout, Vobis’ former assistant director of transportation who was promoted to the district’s assistant superintendent of transportation.
President Joe Biden is given a blanket by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland during the 2024 White House Tribal Nations Summit at the Interior Department on Dec. 9, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden created the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in Pennsylvania on Monday to underscore the oppression Indigenous people faced there and across the broader Native American boarding school system, as well as the lasting impacts of the abuse that occurred at these schools.
The proclamation came as Biden — who hosted his fourth and final White House Tribal Nations Summit on Monday — announced several efforts his administration is taking to support tribal communities.
The administration continues to acknowledge and apologize for the federal government’s role in the Native American boarding school system, which had devastating repercussions for Indigenous communities across the United States. Children at these institutions were subjected to physical, emotional and sexual abuse throughout the 19th and mid-20th centuries.
At least 973 Native children died while attending the boarding schools, according to an investigative report from the Department of the Interior.
“Making the Carlisle Indian School a national monument, we make clear what great nations do: We don’t erase history — we acknowledge it, we learn from it and we remember so we never repeat it again,” Biden said at the summit at the Department of the Interior. “We remember so we can heal. That’s the purpose of memory.”
Carlisle was the first off-reservation federal boarding school for Native children, and took in thousands of children from more than 140 tribes who were stolen from their families.
Carlisle school officials “forced children to cut their hair, prohibited them from speaking their Native languages, and subjected them to harsh labor,” per a White House fact sheet.
Native communities, businesses, hospitals
Vice President Kamala Harris, who spoke at the summit earlier in the day, said “for far too long, the federal government has underinvested in Native communities, underinvested in Native entrepreneurs and small businesses, and underinvested in Native hospitals, schools and infrastructure.”
Harris said that because of these underinvestments, the administration has “made it a central priority — and it will remain a central priority — to address these historic inequities and to create opportunity in every Native community.”
She pointed to the administration’s efforts in helping Native entrepreneurs gain access to capital and investing over $1 billion in Native community banks.
“We know that one of the biggest hurdles to Native entrepreneurs is having access to capital — it’s one of the biggest challenges,” she said, adding that “it’s not for lack of a good idea, for serious work ethic, for a plan that actually would benefit the community and meet a demand, but it’s access to capital.”
Loss of Native languages
Meanwhile, the administration announced a host of additional actions Monday to support tribal communities, such as debuting a decade-long revitalization plan to address the government’s role in the loss of Native languages throughout the country.
“It’s a vision that works with tribes to support teachers, schools, communities, organizations, in order to save Native language from disappearing,” Biden said.
“This matters. It’s part of our heritage. It’s part of who we are as a nation. It’s how we got to be who we are.”
Josh Nease never imagined that pen and paper could feel like an artifact of the past, but in his 24th year in transportation, it did.
During his career in transportation, he would go through “a lot of forms, one at a time” and receive “a lot of input from the drivers,” he recalled.
“They would sit down with us and go over their routes and we’d make adjustments,” Nease said.
For years, it worked well enough, but “well enough” had begun to fray at the edges.
This year marked a turning point at Pleasant Local School District: a bold leap from analog to digital. A new routing software – something the district had flirted with for years but never quite embraced—was now fully implemented.
Pleasant Local School District is located in Marion, Ohio, a city of about 36,000 located about 50 miles north of Columbus. The district has 1,300 students and transports 700 of them via a two-tier system. Nease had inherited the role of Transportation Supervisor from Tom Haley, his predecessor of 15 years. It was Haley who had planted the seeds of change.
“We’d been talking about doing something like this for two or three years,” Nease said. “We just couldn’t find something that was really the right fit for what we needed that we could afford in our budget.”
It wasn’t until a new superintendent, Tom McDonald, entered the scene that those seeds began to sprout. McDonald, who had come from a larger district equipped with routing software, quickly recognized inefficiencies. Personally overhearing dispatchers and staff converse over the radio to determine routes and stops for students, McDonald was even more on board to find a software solution.
The district looked at three or so companies before deciding Transfinder was the best choice.
“The others didn’t seem to flow,” Nease said. “The ease of use just didn’t seem to be there.” Helping to confirm the decision was the fact that several neighboring districts were happy Transfinder clients.
By the time Nease officially took the reins, the plan was already in motion. Last year his team spent time training, building, and beta-testing Transfinder’s award-winning Routefinder PLUS routing system. Now, for the first time, they had a tool that could streamline transportation for the district’s 1,300 students, about 700 of whom relied on the buses daily.
Beyond Routefinder PLUS, the district added Transfinder’s award-winning Stopfinder parent app and Viewfinder, a tool to monitor day-to-day operations and access student ridership information, such as student bus information.
As Nease settled into the new system, the changes were immediate. The 2024-2025 school year was the first school year utilizing the Transfinder technology.
“It’s given the buildings easier access to things. They’re not constantly calling over to the garage for bus stop information,” he said. “The secretaries can get on and look at it. It’s been very, very helpful.”
Routefinder PLUS led to one smoothest openings in recent memory.
“It’s just made things run a lot smoother than they did in the past,” Nease said.
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A mother is speaking out after seeing her son, an enrolled member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, face years of bullying and racism in elementary school.
The bullying culminated in an assault that left the child with lingering injuries, and ongoing threats prompted the family to move to a new town.
Studies have shown that Native American students experience systemically high rates of violence and threats at school.
Lynda Hagen was elevating her broken foot at home in Mercer, Wisconsin, in November 2023 when she got a call from the local school district. Another student had assaulted her 10-year-old son Nate, the district administrator told her.
Hagen threw on a sweatshirt, slipped on her walking cast with her husband’s help and rushed to her car.
With tears streaming down her cheeks, she drove to Mercer’s public K-12 school and district building, worried about Nate’s condition and angry it had come to this.
“I had just felt four years of frustration just come flying out,” she recalled.
She said Nate, an enrolled member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, had faced years of bullying and racism at school, much of it surrounding his Native identity. It escalated during his third-grade year despite Hagen’s complaints to school and district officials, she said.
After Hagen learned more about the November assault and Nate received even more threats at school, she, her husband and her four children decided for Nate’s safety to leave Mercer, population roughly 1,600, not far from the Lac du Flambeau tribe’s reservation.
Now, as Nate adjusts to a new school and continues to recover from the injuries he suffered, Hagen said she is speaking out in hopes that schools will take such bullying more seriously.
“My Native American, tribally enrolled child went to a school that, from the moment he stepped on the bus, until the moment he got off the bus, they were responsible for his safety,” Hagen said. “And they failed him in every aspect.”
Nate isn’t alone. Studies have shown that Native American students experience systemically high rates of violence and threats at school — a long-lasting problem. WXPR also spoke with an adult Lac du Flambeau tribe member who recalled enduring school bullying during her childhood.
“When you have Indigenous children and you see the things that happen across Indian Country or across the nation, you always hope that never happens to my kid,” Hagen said. “And then it does.”
Nate Hagen lets his neighbor’s pet buck lick his hand on Sept. 10, 2024. His mother, Lynda, said that pets have been an important part of their family’s healing process since Nate was assaulted at school last year. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Complaints: Bullying lasted years
Classmates had teased Nate since kindergarten. They made fun of his long braided hair, a custom in many Native American cultures, and they called him homophobic, transphobic and racist slurs, Hagen wrote in a since-dismissed complaint to the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights and in a letter to the district.
A classmate allegedly told him to “go back to where he came from” and broke six pairs of his glasses, she wrote, and Nate allegedly faced multiple threats to cut off his braid.
Hagen told WXPR that the district offered little help.
Then came Nov. 29 of last year, when Nate and his friends played a recess game of keepaway in the school gym.
His alleged longtime bully interrupted them and kicked their volleyball across the room, according to reports by Mercer School District Administrator Renae McMurray and the Iron County Sheriff’s Office — both of which cited video footage of the incident.
After a brief skirmish over the ball, Nate’s classmate grabbed him by the neck and pulled him toward the floor. The sheriff’s office report described a chokehold of 5 or 6 seconds that “caused him to cough, choke and made it hard to breathe.”
After another student pushed the classmate off of Nate, the aggressor “grabs Nate’s hair and pushes him back toward the floor,” McMurray’s report said. Lynda Hagen, who was shown the footage, used stronger words. She said the classmate grabbed Nate’s braid and “thrashed his body back and forth,” until Nate’s two friends broke the boys apart. When the classmate let go, Nate’s head slammed against the ground and “bounced off the floor like a basketball,” Hagen said.
Nate Hagen, right, waits outside a gas station with his sister, Sophie, before heading to Milwaukee for a doctor appointment on Sept. 11, 2024. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
In an interview, Nate recalled the aftermath.
“I was on the ground trying to get my breath, and my head was hurting, because I hit my head and my shoulder was hurting too,” Nate told WXPR.
The video showed no teacher around to intervene, Hagen said. Neither report from the district and sheriff’s office mentions adult intervention.
Two students later independently corroborated that the aggressor called Nate “gay,” McMurray’s report said.
Nate’s friends lifted him up and supported him as he walked to the office, where Nate said he was told to calm down and not overreact. There, McMurray called Lynda Hagen, who rushed over.
Hagen expressed surprise that school officials didn’t more closely check on his injuries or call law enforcement. Hagen called the sheriff’s office when she arrived at the school.
The school district’s student handbook says in cases of accidents, illness or concussions, personnel should administer first aid, if trained to do so, and summon medical help.
“All students, administrators, teachers, staff, and all other school personnel share responsibility for avoiding, discouraging, and reporting any form of harassment,” it says.
Hagen suspects Nate would have been treated differently if he weren’t Native.
McMurray’s report, dated three weeks after the assault, said Nate’s alleged bully was disciplined but did not elaborate. It is unclear whether the classmate faced criminal consequences since many juvenile criminal records are confidential.
Nate was given a safety plan to keep him separate from the other classmate, McMurray’s report said.
A nurse asks Nate Hagen, right, about his neck pain while checking him in for his doctor’s appointment on Sept. 11, 2024, at Greenfield Pediatrics in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Racist bullying: ‘It was the norm when we were in school’
Outside of Mercer’s single school district, research shows systematic differences in how schools have treated Native children compared to white students.
Few Native educators work in Wisconsin public school districts, according to the state Department of Public Instruction. Meanwhile, Wisconsin in past years has been a national leader in referring Native students to law enforcement — doing so at rates far higher than those of white students, causing ripple effects later in children’s lives.
Lac du Flambeau tribe member Jordan Edwards, 35, recalled routinely facing racist bullying and disproportional discipline during her school years in the Crandon area, about 80 miles southeast of Mercer.
She recalled a student one day yelling racial slurs — calling her and her friends “dirty savages” who didn’t belong at the school — while they sat in the lunchroom. School officials “allowed it to happen and watched it,” she said.
After one of her Native friends punched the bully, Edwards said the friend was the only one who faced discipline.
“It was the norm when we were in school. It’s like you either stood up for yourself and got in trouble, or you sat back and you just took it, because nothing would happen when you would report an issue,” Edwards said.
Such behavior, Edwards said, will persist “until more and more people are willing to stand up.” Until then, bullied students in rural communities will be left with few opportunities to be safe at school.
“When we’re in these small communities the closest school is almost 20 miles away,” Edwards said. “So it’s like going to another school isn’t an option.”
Chase Iron Eyes is the executive director of the Sacred Defense Fund, a Native-led nonprofit dedicated to protecting lands, waters and Indigenous communities. He’s an enrolled member of Oglala Lakota and Standing Rock Sioux tribes.
Iron Eyes said such stories are common for Native families across the country who “go through these cyclic episodes of violence and bullying.”
His messages to those children and their parents: “To stay strong, to hang in there — that they’re not alone.”
Nate Hagen, left, rides an elevator up to his doctor’s appointment with his mother, Lynda, and his father, David, on Sept. 11, 2024, at Greenfield Pediatrics in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Nightmares and headaches follow assault
The safety plan Nate’s school approved following the assault sought to keep his alleged bully at a distance during the school day. Nate would also occasionally check in with trusted staff.
It didn’t prevent the classmate from threatening Nate’s life on the last day of the 2023-2024 school year, the family said — a brief encounter that Nate’s older brother witnessed.
The encounter helped convince the family to uproot to a different town, where Nate now attends a different school. WXPR agreed to withhold the name of the town for the family’s safety.
Almost a year after the assault, Nate suffers from nightmares and daily severe headaches, as well as neck, shoulder and lower back pain that his doctors say could be lifelong, according to medical records his mother shared with WXPR. He was recently referred to a pediatric neurosurgeon.
The family in April signed a legal settlement with the Mercer School District for terms that remained undisclosed.
Asked for details, McMurray said in an email: “the Parents and School District have worked collaboratively to resolve the concerns brought forward by the Parents. The School District has expanded its library and provided training to staff related to Native American culture.”
McMurray couldn’t respond further, she said, due to privacy laws around student information.
The Lac du Flambeau Tribal Education Department says it remains committed to the safety of tribal members across various schools.
“In the past we have provided resources to the Mercer school district to facilitate the protection and success of Native students in their schools, but we are currently unaware of if those resources are being utilized,” the department told WXPR in an email. “We are and have been willing to work with them again at any point if they are interested, in the same manner we are willing to work with any and all area schools.”
At the new school and in a new community, Nate and his family are trying to move on and heal. The school has more Native students than Mercer did.
Nate’s uncle and godfather got him involved in Big Drum, a ceremony that Nate is trying out.
“He’s being more grounded in his Native American culture and roots,” his mother said.
LAVEEN, ARIZONA - OCTOBER 25: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks at Gila Crossing Community School on October 25, 2024 in Laveen, Arizona. Biden formally apologized for the trauma inflicted by the federal government's forced Native American boarding school policy. (Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)
Standing solemnly in front of a crowd full of Indigenous people on the grassy field of a tribal elementary school near Phoenix, President Joe Biden issued a formal apology to Indigenous communities across the country for the role the United States government had in the Native American Boarding School system, a system that harmed Indigenous people for generations.
“After 150 years, the United States government eventually stopped the program, but the federal government has never formally apologized for what happened,” Biden said. “Until today — I formally apologize, as president of the United States of America, for what we did.”
Biden’s apology was met with loud cheers from the crowd. He is the first sitting president in the last 10 years to visit a Tribal Nation.
He told the community that it was long overdue and that it was only fitting that it was given at a tribal school within an Indigenous community deeply connected to culture and tradition.
“I have a solemn responsibility to be the first president to formally apologize to the Native peoples, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, Native Alaskans and federal Indian boarding schools,” he said. “It’s long, long, long overdue. Quite frankly, there’s no excuse that this apology took (150) years to make.
Biden said the pain that the federal Indian boarding school policy has caused will always be a significant mark of shame for the United States.
“For those who went through this period, it was too painful to speak of,” he said. “For a nation, it was too shameful to acknowledge.”
“This formal apology is the culmination of decades of work by so many courageous people,” Biden said, acknowledging many who were sitting in the audience, including the boarding school survivors and descendants.
“I know no apology can or will make up for what was lost during the darkness of the federal boarding school policy,” Biden said. “But, today, we’re finally moving forward into the light.”
Biden’s apology, delivered Friday at the Gila River Crossing School on the Gila River Indian Community, comes three years after Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched the first ever federal investigation into Native American Boarding Schools.
Haaland spoke before Biden, and was welcomed to the stage by Miss Gila River Susanna Osife as “Auntie Deb.” Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, told the crowd that thinking about our ancestors today is important because they persevered, and their stories are everywhere.
“We tell those stories because Native American history is American history,” Haaland said.
The Department of Interior released the final boarding school report in July. It provided eight recommendations from the Department of Indian Affairs for the federal government that would support a path to healing for tribal communities.
At the top of that list was a call for the United States to acknowledge and apologize for its role in the federal Indian boarding school policies that have harmed — and continue to harm — Indigenous peoples across the country.
“Today is a day for remembering, but it’s also a day to celebrate our perseverance,” Haaland said. “In spite of everything that has happened, we are still here.”
While boarding schools are places where affluent families send their children for an exclusive education for most of the United States, Haaland noted how different the prospect was for Native Americans.
“For Indigenous peoples, they served as places of trauma and terror for more than 100 years,” she said. “Tens of thousands of Indigenous children as young as four years old were taken from their families and communities and forced into boarding schools run by U.S. government institutions.”
Haaland said that the federal Native American Boarding School system has impacted every Indigenous person she knows, and they all carry the trauma that those policies and schools inflicted.
“This is the first time in history that a United States cabinet secretary has shared the traumas of our past, and I acknowledge that this trauma was perpetrated by the agency that I now lead,” Haaland said. “For decades, this terrible chapter was hidden from our history books, but now our administration’s work will ensure that no one will ever forget.”
Haaland launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative in 2021 to shed light on the “horrific era of our nation’s history.”
The initiative compiled two reports and visited dozens of Indigenous communities, hearing from survivors and descendants so that their experiences are all documented because the goal of Native American Boarding Schools was to assimilate and eradicate Indigenous people.
Haaland said the investigation into these boarding schools are shared in those reports and it shows the “loud and unequivocal truth” that the federal government took deliberate and strategic actions through boarding school policies to isolate Indigenous children from their families and steal from them the languages, cultures, and traditions that are fundamental to Indigenous people.
“As we stand here together, my friends and relatives, we know that the federal government failed,” She said. “It failed to annihilate our languages, our traditions, our life ways. It failed to destroy us because we persevered.”
The Federal Boarding School Initiative’s report called on Congress and federal agencies to take action, and Haaland said that some of those recommendations are already being put into effect.
For instance, Haaland said the department is working alongside the departments of Education and Health and Human Services to invest in the preservation of Native languages.
“We are developing a 10-year national plan guided by tribal leaders and Native language teachers,” Haaland said, and more details about their efforts will be released later.
“The painful loss of our Indigenous languages has been a consistent topic as we have met with survivors across our nation,” she said.
Another effort Haaland highlighted is the department’s collaboration with the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition to create an oral collection of first-person narratives from boarding school survivors.
Haaland said this collaboration is a way to ensure that future generations are told the stories of the boarding school era and understand the impacts and intergenerational trauma caused by boarding school policies.
As the crowd listened to Biden give his speech, protesters with O’odham Solidarity made their voice heard as one walked toward the stage holding a sign calling for justice for Palestinians.
LAVEEN, ARIZONA – OCTOBER 25: Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupt U.S. President Joe Biden’s remarks at Gila Crossing Community School on October 25, 2024 in Laveen, Arizona. Biden formally apologized for the trauma inflicted by the federal government’s forced Native American boarding school policy. (Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)
As Biden delivered his remarks, one protester yelled from the crowd: “No, what about the people in Gaza.”
The protest was met with shouts from the crowd as a man in the crowd yelled: “Get out of here.” But Biden said let her talk.
“Let her go,” Biden said as the protester was being removed. “There’s a lot of innocent people being killed and it has to stop.”
Even after the protestors voiced their concerns, the community’s attention went back to Biden as he continued his speech about the boarding school years as well as his investments to Indian Country.
‘It was long overdue’
Crystalyne Curley said she thought of her grandfathers as Biden delivered his apology, which brought back memories of the stories they would tell of their time at boarding schools and the trauma they experienced.
“It’s a bittersweet moment,” Curley said. “I think there is a lot of a mix of emotions, because each of our Navajo citizens has a tie to the trauma that has happened within our boarding schools.”
Curley serves as speaker of the Navajo Nation Council and has heard stories about the federal boarding school system from her community for generations.
“It was long overdue,” Curley said. “I really commend our president Biden for taking that step and being the first one to have that courage to say, ‘Yes, we done wrong.’”
Curley said that is something that many Indigenous people have been waiting to hear, including the Navajo people.
“Many of our children didn’t come home,” she said, and the policies’ lingering effects include the loss of language and culture.
The Department of the Interior investigated the federal Indian boarding school system across the United States, identifying more than 400 schools and over 70 burial sites.
The legacy of the federal Indian boarding school system is not new to Indigenous people. For centuries, Indigenous people across the country have experienced the loss of their culture, traditions, language and land.
Multiple federally operated boarding schools were established in the Navajo Nation in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and many of them are still operational today, though under different policies than when they were constructed.
Curley said that there are still a lot of federally operated Bureau of Indian Education schools in operation on the Navajo Nation, but some families still hesitate to enroll their children in them because of the boarding school history.
She hopes that this apology will lead to the federal government investing in the education system within tribal nations.
“Start investing back into our children and our mental, spiritual, (and) psychological health that this has caused for many decades,” she added.
Curley said she hopes that the momentum of Biden’s apology will be carried on into the next administration by acknowledging the wrong done to Indigenous communities.
Now that an official apology has been given, Curley said that healing needs to take place and that comes in the form of investing in Indigenous communities, something she said is best done by funding public and mental health resources, as well as reinvesting in the culture and language revitalizations within their communities.
“For healing to take place, it takes at least two generations,” Curley said.
After Biden issued his apology, Native organizations and advocates from across Indian Country called for action.
Cheryl Crazy Bull, the president and CEO of the American Indian College Fund, said that the federal government and philanthropists need to make a significant investment in restorative and healing approaches as well as institutions to repair the harm done by the boarding school era.
“The Native people who we support, from our youngest children to our college students, deserve that investment,” she said.
Crystal Echo Hawk, the founder and CEO of IllumiNative, called Biden’s apology a significant step toward justice for Indian Country, but said it must not be the end of the government’s efforts.
“True accountability requires comprehensive action — beginning with full transparency about the extent of these abuses and the return of Native children’s remains to their families and communities,” she said.
“We must continue to demand further accountability of the harms done to Native peoples, especially the Native children who experienced neglect, inhumane conditions, physical and sexual abuse, and death under the guise of education,” Echo Hawk said. “The federal government must commit to supporting Native-led healing initiatives, language revitalization programs, and cultural preservation efforts to effectively begin repairing the damage of the past.”
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and X.
Talking about politics can be stressful, even in the best circumstances — and moderating a class full of teenagers, all with different backgrounds, news sources and levels of political knowledge, in a historic election year is generally not ideal circumstances.
Teachers across the country are facing decisions on how to talk about elections in an increasingly polarized world. In Wisconsin, there are a lot of factors that may influence that decision, from district policies to heightened division to teachers’ individual comfort with the subject.
Wisconsin standards require teachers to discuss voting. Starting in third grade, standards state students should learn about citizens’ role in government and elections. By sixth grade, they’re starting to learn about political parties and interest groups, and by ninth grade, students are putting together the pieces of partisanship, societal interests and voting.
But with politics becoming increasingly contentious, the question remains: How should teachers address this year’s election in the classroom?
In the Howard-Suamico School District, teachers don’t shy away from the debate. Having civil discourse in classrooms is a way for students to learn to think critically and engage with their community, said Howard-Suamico curriculum and development coordinator Krista Greene.
“Our staff is always looking for ways to make sure that, regardless of what’s going on in American society, we’re equipped in our classes to deal with those things that may be perceived as contentious out there,” Greene said. “We make them not contentious. We boil it down to the facts.”
Students learn to articulate their ideas in different types of discussion methods, such as Socratic seminars and fishbowl discussions. Some teachers provide sentence starters, which can make it easier for students to express complex viewpoints.
The district wants to develop civically minded students, Greene said. While teachers contact parents before bringing potentially contentious issues into the classroom, they also explain why that discussion is important.
“Students learn best when they know that the skills and knowledge that they’re learning are going to be applicable in their lives. And what could be more applicable than learning how to be a citizen?” Greene said. “There’s never a ‘why do I need to know this’ factor about government.”
Jennifer Morgan, a 31-year teacher in West Salem in western Wisconsin, generally uses elections to teach about media literacy. But she avoids getting too in the weeds about politics: It’s not worth it, particularly now that people are so divided on historical facts, she said.
The important thing to her is that students learn to support their opinions with facts. She talks to her students about using diverse sources and walks them through how propaganda and biased information have been used throughout American history.
“You can say that candidate X is the best candidate, but they can’t say ‘because my mom and dad said so,’” Morgan said. “Don’t just tell me, ‘this is what Vice President Harris says.’ Say, ‘OK, where did you get that, and why is it important to your argument?’”
Morgan is president of the National Council for Social Studies. This year, she said, she and many council members may avoid discussing the election at all. For Morgan, it’s too early in the school year for her students to feel like her classroom is the safe space she’d need it to be for a topic like this, she said.
Morgan’s school doesn’t have policies preventing her from talking about the election. But for other teachers, lesson plans may not be allowed to go beyond the basics, as some districts do restrict how teachers can discuss controversial issues like the election in the classroom.
Do school policies restrict how teachers talk about elections?
Policies differ in the Green Bay area. In the Green Bay School District, teachers are strictly limited to the curriculum; while they can discuss elections, they’re not teaching about the 2024 election. The De Pere School District and Ashwaubenon School District both allow teachers to discuss controversial issues in the classroom, as long as they’re related to the subject being studied and appropriate for students.
Wisconsin students aren’t required at the state level to take a government class. Some districts may have their own requirements, or government classes may be offered as an elective, but that lack of a state requirement can prevent students from learning about government itself, much less discussing and understanding current political events, said Jeremy Stoddard, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a researcher in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
How Wisconsin schools handle the election is often based on the local community, Stoddard said. In these partisan local communities, teachers are more likely to focus on political theory or related issues like Morgan’s media literacy lessons than issues that may lean partisan.
“They’re sort of avoiding some of the national political rhetoric, focusing it on, what are the issues that you know that folks stand on? Because in some cases, they’re not actually that far apart,” Stoddard said.
Helping teachers to address controversial subjects
Stoddard recently hosted a conference for teachers focusing on how to discuss election-related issues in the classroom, and where they can access outside resources to help.
One way that districts might skirt criticism while still discussing politics is by using university or PBS materials. One example of those materials is Stoddard and his team’s own PurpleState, a free curriculum where students simulate working in a communications firm for a state political campaign. It’s meant to help them understand politics and political communication at the state level, where students may be able to have more of an impact in their real lives.
Engagement is what’s important, Stoddard said, and focusing on election partisanship can make people tune out. The challenge teachers face is to find their way around that — and to do so while balancing district policies, concerned parents and political misinformation.
“(The goal is) to find ways to engage people meaningfully in something like an election, which should be an event that we revere as a democratic institution and peaceful transfer of power,” Stoddard said. “I think it shouldn’t be this challenging to do it, but that’s the current sort of partisanship that we’re in.”
Contact Green Bay education reporter Nadia Scharf at nscharf@gannett.com or on X at @nadiaascharf.
This story is part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab’s series covering issues important to voters in the region.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit challenging Gov. Tony Evers’ last-minute budget maneuver increasing funding for Wisconsin school districts for the next 400 years.
Yes, you read that correctly.
The state’s most recent budget included a provision increasing the revenue limit for school districts by $325 per pupil for “the 2023-24 school year and the 2024-25 school year.” Using his partial veto authority, Evers changed the line to read, “for 2023-2425.”
He did so by striking a handful of characters: “121.905 (3) (c) 9. For the limit for the 2023-24 school year and the 2024–25 school year, add $325 to the result under par. (b).”
The revenue limit controls the amount of funding school districts can raise through a combination of state aid and local property taxes. Evers’ veto allows school districts in the state to collectively increase revenue by almost $270 million each year, allowing an already record increase to be duplicated every year for four centuries.
Evers’ veto-authored provision, by the time it expired in 2425, would add $130,650 per pupil to a district’s revenue limit, according to a Cap Times analysis. The revenue limit for Madison schools in 2022-23, for example, was $14,254 per pupil.
Evers’ move, which garnered national attention, was condemned by GOP leaders. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said a week after the change that Wisconsin Republicans were preparing to sue over the increase. In April, their allies at the WMC Litigation Center, a 501(c)(3) affiliate of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s powerful business lobby, filed an original action with the state Supreme Court.
The court agreed to hear the case in June, teeing up Wednesday’s hearing.
Filed on behalf of two Wisconsin residents, the lawsuit argues Evers’ partial veto was unconstitutional for two reasons.
“First, Wisconsin’s governor may approve an appropriation bill ‘in part,’ but Gov. Evers’s 402-year increase of the school-district revenue limit is not ‘part’ of the legislatively approved two-year increase,” attorneys wrote in a brief with the court.
Rather, attorneys for WMC argued that since the 400-year increase was not included in the budget, but instead created by the governor, it runs afoul of the state constitution’s provision allowing governors to approve, but not create, budget bills “in whole or in part.”
“Second, in 1990, Wisconsin voters amended our state constitution to prohibit the so-called ‘Vanna White’ or ‘pick-a-letter’ veto,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys said in their brief. “(Evers’ veto) is a Vanna White veto.”
A Vanna White veto — named for the “Wheel of Fortune” star — is when a governor uses partial veto authority to strike “phrases, digits, letters, and word fragments” in order to “create new words, sentences, and dollar amounts,” according to a report from the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
The constitutionality of Vanna White vetoes was tested in the 1980s after then-Gov. Tommy Thompson employed them to make changes to the budget bill in 1987. Miffed by Thompson’s actions, the Democratic leaders of the Legislature filed a lawsuit with the state Supreme Court. The high court upheld the vetoes, finding “the governor may, in the exercise of his partial veto authority over appropriation bills, veto individual words, letters and digits, and also may reduce appropriations by striking digits, as long as what remains after veto is a complete, entire, and workable law.”
A few weeks after the ruling, the Democratic-controlled Legislature held an extraordinary session to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing Vanna White vetoes, which was eventually approved by a wide margin in a 1990 referendum, according to LRB. The amendment included the following language in the state constitution: “In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill.”
Attorneys for Evers, meanwhile, argued in legal briefs that he did nothing wrong.
Precedent established in the Thompsoncase “merely requires the governor’s vetoes to leave behind a complete and workable law,” they wrote.
“The partial vetoes at issue undeniably yield such a law, and so they are valid,” attorneys for Evers continued.
The governor also said he did not violate the amendment banning Vanna White vetoes.
“The vetoes at issue comply with this provision because they deleted digits, not letters,” his attorneys wrote. They noted the amendment bars a governor from “rejecting individual letters in the words” but doesn’t say anything about digits.
“Because this Court’s precedent and the amendment’s history confirms the common-sense understanding that ‘digits’ are not ‘letters,’ Petitioners’ challenge … also fails,” attorneys for the governor argued.
Some independent legal experts, though, are skeptical of Evers’ position. In an amicus brief filed with the court, Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor and expert on state and local government, said Evers’ veto flies in the face of the constitutional requirement of bicameralism and presentment.
“The partial veto power was designed to restore balance in (the legislative) process — not to subvert it by giving the governor capacious unilateral lawmaking authority,” he wrote.
We’re watching to see if the court’s liberal majority, which has so far been friendly to Evers, will once again rule in his favor, or instead rein in one of his key budget victories.
Forward is a look ahead at the week in Wisconsin government and politics from the Wisconsin Watch statehouse team.
The industry looks at technology and training to improve back-to-school routing issues, student and parent attacks, and developing electric school buses.
Have you read the new STN September issue? Listen to cover star and Director of Support Operations Ron Johnson share what’s going right at the fully staffed and technologically advanced Indian Prairie School District #204 in Illinois.
Local law enforcement said individuals did not attempt to board two San Diego-area school buses last week, contradicting previous news reports that alluded to undocumented immigrants trying to illegally access the vehicles with students on board.
On Aug. 28, Jamul-Dulzura Union School District, which serves a 163-square-mile area east of San Diego and about 20 miles northwest of Tecate, Mexico, released a statement stating that the incidents involved people that local media identified as 20 migrants, either trying to stop or board a bus at a bus stop.
But in responding to questions posed by School Transportation News, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office shared a different scenario on Friday.
“The Sheriff’s Office spoke to several individuals who witnessed the two incidents and based off what was shared, it appears that while several individuals approached the bus, there never appeared to be any intent to forcefully try to stop or enter the school buses, therefore no crime was committed,” a spokesperson said via email.
“At no point and time did anyone other than the students enter a bus, or even get close to entering a bus,” the spokesperson continued. “It is not uncommon for community volunteers and charitable organizations to provide resources in these parts of the county, some of which operate vehicles similar to school buses.”
The Sheriff’s Office noted that deputies have provided extra patrol on school bus routes since Thursday iof last week, and its recognized the concern from the community. It has been working alongside the district to provide reassurance to the families.
“Impacted families have received formal communication from Jamul-Dulzura Union School District that captures the latest on the incidents that occurred this week, as well as our collaborative work to keep the communities safe,” the spokesperson stated.
The New York Post reported that last Tuesday that at least three migrants walked in the middle of a highway in an effort to stop a bus, which was forced to go around them. The next day, about 20 individuals reportedly tried get on a bus at the same stop off the highway, as students were boarding the bus for school. The article states that Superintendent Liz Bystedt ordered all bus drivers to skip over stops where migrants were known to frequent.
Ron Johnson of Indian Prairie School District #204 in Illinois. Cover design by Kimber Horne. Photo courtesy of Tyler Technologies.
This month’s issue highlights the 2024 Technology Super Users, featuring Ron Johnson who utilized his district’s technology during a nearby shooting incident. More articles discuss the use of technology to further safety of students, the back to school industry challenges and construction of transportation facilities and repair shops.
Wielding Transportation Superpowers
It’s one thing to purchase technology. It’s another to utilize the solution to its fullest, especially during an emergency.
Features
Accounted For?
Keeping tabs on student whereabouts can be complicated at school bus stops. Technology meets standardized training to better account for the children both inside and outside the bus.
Eye On Expansion
What goes into a designing a new transportation facility? These transportation directors share their must-haves as they navigate various stages of construction.
Surveys can be tricky things. If you don’t ask questions, you don’t receive criticism. But you don’t even receive constructive feedback.
Did you know Transfinder has created a free tool embedded in the award-winning Routefinder PLUS routing solution that makes it easy for districts to conduct their own surveys? It’s called Formfinder and it’s far more unique and useful than free survey tools out there because it allows you to tailor your survey geographically or isolate the results based on a certain region.
For example, you may find that concerns being voiced are not districtwide but from one area and as a result there may be a deeper reason for those concerns.
At Transfinder we are constantly conducting surveys, even providing enticements like a gift card to encourage people to provide their honest answers to questions. If you’ve attended any of our webinars or appearances at national or state association conferences, you’ve heard our President and CEO, Antonio Civitella, say, “I want to hear the good, the bad and the ugly.”
He’ll quickly add that it’s the only way we can get better.
Survey: How was your school opening?
We recently used Formfinder to survey our clients about how their school opening was. We are continuing to survey clients because there are parts of the country where school hasn’t opened yet. We asked if their opening was “The Best Ever,” “Good Overall,” “Some Hiccups/Minor Issues” or “Serious issues.”
Most of the responses, which came from districts across the country, were that most openings were “The Best Ever” or “Good Overall.”
“This was our best year yet,” said Diane Spurlock, transportation director at Indian Hill Exempted Village School District in Cincinnati, Ohio. “Every year I learn and implement more of the Routefinder PLUS features. Your products are greatly appreciated. There is a lot to it but I love being able to check and sort out my information in so many different ways. This is what made for a great opening day.”
Wes Alexander, director of transportation at Henderson County Schools in Kentucky, had a similar experience.
“Since we upgraded to PLUS last year, our routing has been more efficient and has helped tremendously with smooth days,” he said. Besides Routefinder PLUS, the driver app Wayfinder and field trip solution Tripfinder contributed to the smooth opening.
Was this your school’s experience this school opening?
Routefinder PLUS
Andrew Strack, transportation secretary at East Noble School Corp. in Indiana, said this was the best school opening he’s experienced.
“Making changes to routes, adding students and stops were quick and easy,” he said. “This is my first year in the job of routing and I couldn’t believe how well it went.”
SEO = Safety, Efficiency and Optimization
Dale Wagner, director of transportation at Concord Community Schools in Michigan, said he faced challenges prior to the start of school.
“We lost a driver due to retirement,” Wagner said, yet with Routefinder PLUS, he was “able to eliminate and combine his route into others completely.”
Wayfinder and Infofinder i
Craig Henson, coordinator of transportation at Tuscaloosa County Schools in Alabama, noted that “Transfinder products provided a wide array of tools and resources to handle all of the logistics necessary for opening school and being prepared for transporting 12,500-plus students. Safety, efficiency and optimization were three key tools that helped in this.”
SEO – Safety, Efficiency and Optimization – are embedded in Transfinder’s suite of products. Henson mentioned beyond PLUS the importance of the driver app Wayfinder and Transfinder’s Infofinder i solution, which allows parents to quickly access their child’s bus information.
Jeannie Del Rio, an administrative assistant with Murray City School District in Utah, also boasted of a good opening thanks to tools such as Routefinder PLUS and Infofinder i.
“We were able to create a new route, get students geocoded, send parent emails and transmit up-to-date information for Infofinder,” she said, noting that Transfinder’s resources, such as the twice-a-day hotlines, played a role in such a smooth opening. “I think the summer webinars helped me be prepared. I was able to get route and information in place prior to the onslaught of student registration!”
Stopfinder
Carla Stearns, transportation supervisor at Brookfield Local Schools in Ohio also pointed to the parent app Stopfinder as a huge help for school opening.
“Stopfinder has made communication with parents much better,” she said.
Viewfinder
Kelly Dicke, transportation coordinator at St. Mary’s City Schools in Ohio also mentioned how critical Viewfinder was for a seamless opening. Districts with Viewfinder provide unlimited users access to district transportation information, including bus schedules.
“Building secretaries were able to look up students to assist with afternoon bus numbers if the student wasn’t sure which bus to board,” Dicke said.
Are phone calls into your district from parents up, the same as last year, or down? Abby DeWeese’s response may surprise you.
Read what the routing supervisor at Alvin ISD in Texas had to say.
To learn how you can have the kind of opening these districts had – and many more – call 800-373-3609 or email marketing@transfinder.com with the word “Opening” in the subject line.
The views expressed are those of the content sponsor and do not reflect those of School Transportation News.
With schools starting up across the country, the National Transportation Safety Board brought together four panelists to discuss key safety considerations.
During a webinar on Aug. 21, NTSB staff highlighted pertinent safety recommendations and addressed crash investigations with the aim to educate listeners on safe transportation.
Topics emphasized during the webinar included occupant protection, school bus safety, equity, safety routes to school, pedestrian, bicyclist and e-scooter safety.
“Nearly 550,000 school buses are in operation in the U.S and every school today these buses transport more than 20 million students to and from school,” said Meg Sweeney, an NTSB project manager and accident investigator.
In 2021, she noted there were 42,939 total fatalities on our roadways, 108 of those occurring in school transportation related fatalities. Most of the fatalities were the occupants of other vehicles, while only eight occupants of school transportation vehicles such as large school buses were fatally injured in 2021.
This data supports the assertion that school buses are the safest mode of transportation for students during their school commute. This is due to bus driver training and federal vehicle construction standards. Despite this, there are always ways in which safety can be improved, stated Sweeney.
Sweeny also shared how over the years NTSB investigated several crash investigations and issued several recommendations to improve school bus safety in various ways. These recommendations include vehicle design and technology, such as lane departure warning and prevention systems. Another recommendation is occupant protection, namely lap/shoulder seatbelts, and ways to use passenger safety restraint systems to keep children within the compartmentalization of high-back, cushioned seats on school buses.
Kristin Poland, NTSB’s deputy director of highway, also discussed occupant protection. She added that for students to maintain consciousness during a crash and be able to self-evacuate, they need to be belted so they better protect their heads.
Another topic the panelists discussed was safety outside the bus.
“Children are more vulnerable when waiting at bus stops, loading or unloading,” said Brittany Rawlinson, a statistician and data and policy analyst for NTSB, adding that nearly all school-age pedestrian fatalities occurred during the hours when children would be transiting to and from school. NHTSA reported that nearly all school-age pedestrian fatalities from 2013 to 2022 occurred from 3 p.m. to 3:59 p.m. more than any other time.
NTHSA reported 198 school-age child fatalities in school transportation related crashes occurring from 2013 to 2022. About 1.5 times more of those fatalities occurred with pedestrians than occupants of school transportation vehicles, explained Rawlinson.
NTSB recommendations to government agencies and states include reducing speed limits that can increase the time available to motorists for reacting to hazards. Carpooling also reduce the number of vehicles in the school zone, always crossing students in crosswalks when available, utilizing designated off-street drop off and pick up locations, and enforcing laws that require all vehicles to stop when red school bus lights are flashing or when stop sign is extended.
The webinar ended with statistics, explaining how emergency departments have reported 13,557 injuries related to e-scooters from 2020 and 2021 with 67 percent of the injuries being in the head due to not wearing a helmet. Analysis on how over half of the 55 percent of school age pedestrians killed in school transportation related traffic crashes from 2013 to 2022 were five to ten year olds. Lastly, case reporting on different crashes in which there has been fatalities, as well as the belief that there is an urgent need for better safety measures beyond the bus.
Jeremiah Falgout, 7, is the first confirmed student fatality of the new school year after he was hit and killed by his school bus.
Louisiana State Police stated that the incident occurred on Aug. 22 at around 4 p.m. A 2019 Freightliner B2 school bus was traveling south on Highway 665, when it approached Falgout’s stop. After the school bus driver activated the flashing warning lights, the bus stopped and students including Falgout proceeded to exit.
For reasons still unknown at this report, Louisiana State Police said that as the bus started moving again, it struck Falgout and caused critical injuries. He was transported to the hospital, where he died.
“The Terrebonne Parish School District Community suffered a devastating school bus accident on Thursday resulting in the loss of one of our Montegut Elementary students,” Terrebonne Parish School District posted via Facebook. “Our deepest condolences go out to the student’s family, friends, and loved ones in this difficult time. No words can truly express the sorrow and heartbreak felt in a moment like this. Please pray for the Montegut and Point-Aux-Chenes communities affected by this unimaginable loss.”
The school bus driver, who was not identified, voluntarily submitted to a breath test and impairment was not suspected as a cause. The test showed no alcohol detected. The school bus driver as well as other student passengers were not injured.
Amid back to school, a Texas school bus driver hit an 8-year-old student.
Pofficers were notified that a Schertz Cibolo Universal City Independent School District school bus was involved in a collision with a pedestrian at around 3 p.m. on Aug. 16 — the second day of school. The unidentified 8-year-old female who attends Sippel Elementary School, located about 23 miles northeast of downtown San Antonio, was transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
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