Mondovi Board welcomes new member; athletics happenings discussed

 

by Beth Kraft

 

All seven seats on the Mondovi School Board and all officer positions were occupied for the first time in about two months at the Board’s regular monthly meeting on Monday, Oct. 20.

Newly-installed Board member Jean Sandberg sat in on her first full board meeting that evening while current member Steve Williamson was elected vice president by his peers.

Sandberg, an MHS alum and retired library director with the Eau Claire School District, was chosen by the Board from three other candidates to fill an open seat on the Board at a special meeting held Oct. 6. Sandberg will serve the remainder of the seat’s current term, which expires in April, 2015, at which point she can opt to run for election to a full three-year term.

Following candidate interviews that evening, Sandberg received three votes from Board members Laura Wolf, Ron Keys and David Dregney. Ginny Gunderson earned two votes from Williamson and Lisa Heike, and Pat Poeschel received a vote from Barrett Brenner. The fourth candidate to put their name in the hat for consideration was Corey Lewis.

The seat filled by Sandberg had been vacant since August following the unexpected passing of then-Board president Rhonna Casey. With vice president Wolf stepping up to assume president’s duties, the Board was advised to select a new vice president to keep the officer’s positions full.

Williamson, who had declined all officer nominations during the past few Board reorganizations due to other commitments, accepted the nomination this time around citing the recent major changes on the Board. He also acknowledged that the role will be temporary, as another reorganization will follow the spring 2015 election.

Also that night, activities director Randy Pongratz shared some of the latest news in high school athletics with the Board.

Pongratz reported on the most recent decisions made by the Competitive Equality Committee, a group created in response to the call for a 1.65 multiplier for parochial schools in an effort to level the playing field between public and private institutions. In short, the multiplier would have essentially bumped all private schools, like Eau Claire Regis, up one division in WIAA athletics competition.

However, Pongratz noted the multiplier was shot down following loud disapproval from Wisconsin’s private institutions, resulting in the creation of the Competitive Equality Committee, which includes representatives from all over the state, to come up with another solution.

So far that committee has brainstormed a few different theories, such as using free and reduced lunch numbers, population within a certain boundary around each school, and long-term success factors to determine how schools should be assigned divisions.

Pongratz reasoned none of the aforementioned options are likely to work well on their own, but noted something needs to be done to correct the ongoing gap between public and private schools in the WIAA’s lower divisions.

“We need to start someplace,” Pongratz said.

Mondovi’s non-conference football schedule was also discussed that evening as was the possibility of adding an eighth team to the Dunn-St. Croix Conference for football only.

Pongratz said Mondovi has struggled in recent years to find a non-conference team to play during its DSC bye week, which falls between weeks three and nine of the season.

Through the 2012 season, Mondovi had an agreement with the Lakeland Conference for a non-conference game, but finding a game to fill the schedule for the past two years has been no easy task. 

The conference’s other teams have had similar troubles, Pongratz said, with some traveling across state lines to play teams in Minnesota or even the UP of Michigan. This year, Mondovi was lucky to strike a deal with Antigo, a team that was equally desperate to fill its schedule and willing to travel across the state to do it.

Mondovi will renew its agreement with the Lakeland Conference next year, Pongratz said, for a game with Unity, but it’s not guaranteed to continue indefinitely. In searching for a long-term solution, the DSC did petition the WIAA to allow them to create an eight-team conference for football only to avoid the scheduling problems in the future.

Pongratz said the league was unsure who the eighth team would be if the conference’s request is approved.

In other business that night, the Board approved the following:

• individual contracts for Kari Jehn and Kim Bursaw, Prom advisors; Kim Bursaw and Lori Ness, special education aides; Dan Kirking, assistant wrestling coach; Kevin Stadter, eighth grade boys basketball coach

• out-of-state travel for second grade field trip to Lark Toys, Kellogg, Minn., and the Eagle Center, Wabasha, Minn.

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