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Recall dropped

Petition against Phair misses deadline

By Robert Cloud


Phair

A petition seeking to recall Waupaca School Board member Pat Phair failed to meet the deadline.

The petition was due by Aug. 22, 60 days after Shelly Morzfeld filed a notice of intent to circulate the recall petition.

According Morzfeld, organizers collected 1,400 of the 1,700 needed to force a recall.

Recall efforts began after a May 21 special school board meeting when Phair became angry and used the f-word while criticizing the board for not following the advice of the medical experts and voting to make masks optional during summer school.

On Aug. 10, the school board voted 4-3 on a covid mitigation plan for the academic year beginning in the fall of 2021.

Recommended by the school nurses, the plan does not mandate face masks.

However, the nurses asked the board to recognize that the district’s covid protocols must be fluid due to the changing nature of the health situation.

Phair voted in favor of the plan, noting that he trusted the school nurses’ recommendation due to their hard work at protecting students and staff over the past 18 months.

“I was approached by parents that were part of the recall committee and they felt that after the school board meeting they felt that the message was heard and they decided not to go through with the rally to finish it out,” Morzfeld said.

Morzfeld also cited a communication that District Administrator Ron Saari sent to parents on Aug. 20.

In that letter, Saari said masks would be optional at the beginning of the school year.

A week later, Saari sent another communication that said, “After continued consultation with our medical team, we are moving to all students, staff, and visitors being required to wear face masks while inside any District building.”

The mask mandate will be in effect from Aug. 30 to Sept. 10.

“By instituting the additional protection provided by face masks, our hope is that we get through the first two weeks of school (7 school days) and through this current increase in community cases with zero cases of COVID in our schools,” Saari said in the Aug. 27 letter.

Waupaca County is now rated as a high risk area due to a rise in the number of covid cases.

On Aug. 27, Waupaca County reported a seven-day trend of 108 cases, up 50% from the previous week.

Accusations of an agenda

Phair, who publicly apologized for the language he used during the May 21 meeting, believes those circulating the petition were motivated by a radical political agenda.

“I offered a wedge to get that recall started by using some bad language,” Phair said, adding that their agenda includes “wanting teachers to carry guns in the classroom, censor books, implement prayer in school, control how we teach American history by overlooking how we treated Indigenous people and down playing the impact that slavery has had on this country.”

Phair said the group that circulated the petition have accused the school board of only working for the teachers union and that those who serve on the school board are “in it only for the money.”

“We are a public school with the emphasis on public,” Phair said. “We are the last bastion of equity in America. We don’t ask our students if they are gay or straight or transgender. We don’t look at our students in terms of their skin color or the religion they practice. We take every student who comes through the door.”

Phair said most of the parents and area residents he spoke with thought the recall was unnecessary “because it was not an egregious error.”

He also accused those circulating the petition of seeking to overturn the last school board election.

“I’m not sure they believe the last school board election was followed properly,” Phair said. “They don’t believe the people who won should have won.”

Morzfeld denied that her efforts to recall Phair were motivated by a political agenda.

“The purpose was to reinforce mutual respect and hold our community leaders to a higher standard,” Morzfeld said. “When Pat lost his cool, he overreacted emotionally.”

Morzfeld said Phair’s emotional outburst set a precedent of uncivil behavior at a school board meeting, adding that passions became so heated that some parents at a school board meeting in Burlington began trampling through the school building.

“I think we can safely say that Waupaca is better than that and that is not a path we want to go down,” Morzfeld said.

“I don’t think people in Waupaca want our school district to change in any radical way,” Phair said. “I think most people are satisfied with how we are keeping students safe, hiring quality teachers, and maintaining a sell-funded, successful district. We have every right in our community to be proud of our education system.”

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