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Thursday, December 12, 2019 • Vol. 55, No. 30 • Verona, WI • Hometown USA • ConnectVerona.com • $1.25
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Travel study could affect start times With new school locations, hazardous transportation areas could affect busing KIMBERLY WETHAL Unified Newspaper Group
School start times could be added to the long list of what’s changing in the Verona Area School District for the upcoming 2020-21 year. As boundaries shift for elementary and middle school attendance zones with the opening of a new high school and a shift of several other buildings, the district must Photo by Kimberly Wethal
A student shows off fashion from her region of heritage during the annual Multicultural Show on Friday, Dec. 6, at the Verona Area High School Performing Arts Center.
Cultural connection
Verona Area High School students showed pride in what makes them who they are Friday, Dec. 6. Students performed in the annual Multicultural Show three times Friday, twice to their peers during the school day and to the public Friday night. The show, consisting of singing, dancing and spoken word performances, was a
part of the Social Justice Youth Summit held for high school students during the day. The Multicultural Show included spoken word poetry about mental health for people of color and a sense of belonging, dances featuring Latinx and Korean pop music influences, song performances from artists who reflected an aspect of the performer’s culture and a fashion show featuring regional threads from areas around the world. Email reporter Kimberly Wethal at kimberly.wethal@wcinet.com and follow her on Twitter @kimberly_wethal.
Inside See more photos of the Multicultural Show, and read about the VAHS Social Justice Youth Summit and Stoner Prairie’s Equity Institute Pages 12 and 13
More time needed for alignment Proposal draws staff, parent concerns over reduced music time, added workload KIMBERLY WETHAL Unified Newspaper Group
For Christmas, the school board’s gift to Verona Area School District administrators is time. That’s how district curriculum and instruction director Ann Franke put it after a school board members promised to extend an implied deadline to align the
three middle schools next year. Their initial proposed class schedule, introduced Friday, Dec. 6, at a Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment committee meeting, had raised concerns among both teachers and parents, including reduced time for music education and increased teacher workload. The plan to align the schedules for Badger Ridge and Savanna Oaks middle schools and Core Knowledge Charter School’s grades 6-8 is one result of a middle school study requested by the school board in 2015 as part of an effort to create more equity in student The
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experiences leading to high school. While the school board doesn’t approve scheduling, it does look over schedule proposals to ensure they align with the district’s goals. The proposal would have both equalized and increased the number of minutes in a day given to four core knowledge areas: English, math, social studies and science. The lunch period would also have been a few minutes longer, with the trade-off of reducing the number of music, language and other elective classes – also referred to as “encore” classes
Turn to Alignment/Page 14
evaluate transportation areas in the district that could be deemed as “unusually hazardous.” That evaluation will yield new transportation routes and could change the start times of the school day, superintendent Dean Gorrell told the school board Tuesday night. Unusually hazardous conditions might include the lack of sidewalk on a road a student needs to take to walk to school or a high speed limit on a road that might make it generally unsafe to walk on the shoulders. Students who live in such areas could be bused to school even if they live within the maximum walking distance
Turn to Start times/Page 14
From VAHS to NPR NEAL PATTEN Unified Newspaper Group
While listening to the radio, some residents might recognize a familiar voice on a certain station. 2005 Verona Area High School graduate Kat Lonsdorf now works for NPR’s “All Things Considered” as a behind-the-scenes producer and occasional on-air reporter. In that wide-ranging role, she’s covered everything from Zimbabwe to the impeachment hearings for President Donald Trump that resulted in charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress this week. Lonsdorf said that often, when one of her stories runs on the air, she will hear from someone in Verona who was listening, including one of her favorite high school teachers who was “excited” to hear her voice on the radio. “It feels like a small world, reaching back to people I knew in Verona,” she said in a phone call to the Press. In late February, she’ll go to Japan for six months to report on the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, the second largest nuclear disaster in history, as a fellow for the international Above the Fray Fellowship. Applicants pitched their own ideas for what country and
topic to cover. Lonsdorf’s coverage of Fukushima will seek to answer lingering questions about health Kat Lonsdorf and safety ahead of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The 2011 disaster, caused by a tsunami, resulted in thousands of residents being evacuated and numerous cities placed into an exclusion zone. Now, with the Olympics approaching, Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to lift the evacuation orders in the exclusion zone, allowing thousands of people to be able to return home for the first time in eight years, a controversial issue Lonsdorf will cover extensively.
Early Japanophile
For Lonsdorf, pitching a story about Japan was a natural progression for her career. She has been a Japanophile from a young age. Lonsdorf started learning Japanese as a child, by attending a Japanese language immersion camp in Minnesota called the Concordia Language Village program. She attended the camp for one month every summer for 10 years, from ages 6 to 16. By
Turn to Lonsdorf/Page 16
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VAHS students show off background, personalities at Multicultural Show
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