Some differences emerge among the candidates in response to the question about the school district’s vision for facilities planning. The district’s vision statement is built around three concepts: equity, excellence and equity. But the candidates disagree on how to balance the competing interests that these concepts imply.
Three of the candidates say which one is their highest priority while another points to the importance of balancing student needs with affordability.
Although Dan Becker and Karen Bowen were the top voter-getters in the primary, they often seem to be ideological opposites. But both say they would rate excellence as the key goal.
Dan Becker:
“The most important of the three is excellence. Without excellence, equity and efficiency have no meaning.”
Karen Bowen:
“Providing excellence for all students is the most important part of this vision.”
Michelle Monte suggests a mixed approach:
“The bottom line is what does our student population need and what will our community support financially.”
For Teresa Thiel equity is most important:
“I believe that we must support all of these values but because we don't live in a perfect world we cannot support them equally. I believe the most important should be equity.”
Vision statements are, necessarily, vague. They aren’t supposed to supply all the answers, only give some direction. But if a vision statement is too vague, then it fails because it creates more confusion than consensus.
Is the district’s facilities planning process suffering from a flawed vision?
The candidates disagree about this. Mr. Becker and Ms. Monte express concerns about the lack of definition and specificity for three key terms in the vision statement.
“I think the vision statement is at best over simplifying the actual issues that the district is trying to address and resolve,” says Mr. Becker.
“The reality is that there is no definitive definition of those concepts,” Ms. says Monte.
Ms. Thiel seems more comfortable with the vision statement as written, although she acknowledges that excellence is hard to define and “sometimes you just know it when you see it.”
Ms. Bowen sees the vision statement as a clear expression of where the district should be headed. She also sees it as a “challenge” laid down to which the district needs to respond in moving to “the next level.”
An interesting difference of opinion emerges between Mr. Becker and Ms. Bowen.
Mr. Becker:
“I really don’t think the excellence of Oshkosh Schools is in question.”
Ms. Bowen:
"While our students do well on many measures of excellence, my concern is that if we allow the district to remain the way it is at this point in time, we will no longer have the resources to maintain even current standards, much less take the district to new levels.”
An area of agreement among the candidates is that equity is not the same thing as equality.
Ms. Monte:
“To me equity means that every building has similar opportunities, quality education, quality instruction, and facilities. Note I did not say equal. If everything were equal, every building would look identical and every teacher would be robotically identical. That is not fair as students are not equal.”
Ms. Thiel:
Equity “does not mean that everything is equal or exactly the same. It means that our buildings should make it possible for students to have the same exposure to the same experiences across the district.”
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