TOP NEWS STORIES OF 2016

The Mercer School Scandal

Like a plague, news of the showing the sexually explicit R-rated movie “50 Shades of Grey” to Mercer school children continues to spread. The shocking incident is receiving statewide –indeed nationwide – notoriety.  Print, broadcast and social media have been saturated with telling how the decadent incident unfolded.  It has even been cited as the “Mercer bad example” at a teacher conference as “what not to do”.   Members of the clergy are preaching about it from their pulpits.

The movie was rented by Mercer teacher and volleyball coach Robyn Schoeneman and shown to teenage girls in the car of school board vice president Kelly Kohegyi, mother-in-law to school Administrator Erik Torkelson .    

“50 Shades of Grey” is notable for its depiction of graphic acts of sexual violence, bondage and domination.  The book upon which the movie is based is banned by public libraries in a number of states.

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Juris Imprudence

Beware!  Your 1^st Amendment Right to Free Speech Has Been Revoked

That’s essentially what Iron County Circuit Judge Pat Madden did when he warned a Mercer businesswoman that she needs “to see the consequences of what she says, who she says it to and when she says it.” Madden’s baffling statement was made at the conclusion of a hearing in his court for a restraining order brought by Mercer school teacher Robyn Schoeneman  against Christa Reinert, who is the mother of two Mercer students.  

The whole charade is an attempt to embarrass and harass Reinert as she tries to win a seat on the Mercer school board.  Ironically the petition was filed shortly after Reinert filed for election to the school board. What a coincidence!

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Never-Ending Deception

“Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave, When First We Practice to Deceive!”  -- Sir Walter Scott

 

Could statements in the recent Mercer School District’s quarterly newsletter mean that the administrator and school board are finally coming to grips with their past transgressions?  It would seem so as one way to read what Administrator Erik Torkelson wrote.

 

Apparently referring to the “50 Shades” scandal, he said:  “Recently negativity has crept in and taken root and it is eroding the positive, productive climate we have all worked hard to create.  This relentless negativity is damaging the children of this community as well as the brand and reputation of this great community.”

Indeed, the negative statewide and nationwide attention given to the “50 Shades” scandal has damaged the reputation of Mercer and is damaging the children.  However, we were surprised to hear Torkelson admit this because he was an intricate part of the cover up which followed the sordid affair. 

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“One small step for man, one great leap for mankind.” Astronaut Neil Armstrong in landing on the moon.

Mercer Voters Have Spoken--Loud and Clear and They Want   Change

Mercer voters decided to take a great leap toward cleaning up the Mercer school board mess by electing Christa Reinert as a new board member.  Christa, who has pledged to “make a difference” as a school board member, beat two members of Administrator Erik Torkelson’s closely controlled school board clique with the 452 votes she received.  Voters booted Torkelson stooge Denise Thompson off of the board.

Christa even received more votes than school board president Deanna Pierpont who used dirty tricks to try to keep Christa from being elected. Unfortunately, Pierpont was reelected to the board with 436 votes.

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Figures Don’t Lie

The School District’s Own Records

When Mercer School Facts revealed that Administrator Erik Torkelson took home a shocking $161,336.12 in salary and benefits some people questioned how that was at all possible.  After all, his contract provided for a salary of $98,000 plus about $15,000 in benefits.

 

Torkelson reluctantly surrendered the data 18 days after he falsely said at the Sept. 27 school board meeting that he had already provided it to school board member Christa Reinert.  Christa was forced to file a request for the salary information under the state’s public records law after she had been denied it.

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The ACT Score Conundrum

 

Mercer’s Composite Score Drops; Continues Well Below State Average

 

The Mercer student ACT composite score for 2016 dropped 11.2% to 18.1 from 20.2 in 2015, and was still well below the state average of 20.5 for 2016 and the national average of 20.8.

Take a look at this information from the DPI website:

2008 – 21.9

2009 – 21.4

2010 – 21.0

2011 – 21.3

TORKELSON BECOMES ADMINISTRATOR

2012 – REDACTED

2013 – 20.0

2014 – REDACTED

2015 – 20.2

2016 – 18.1

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Mercer Gets a “D”

Sunshine Week: The Lakeland Times’ 2016 Open Records Grades

 

In honor of Sunshine Week - a celebration and advocacy of open government - The Lakeland Times presents the newspaper's 2015 awards and grades for openness in conducting public business.

The following grades are calculated using several measures, including how responsive officials have been this past year to open records' requests, how diligently they have strived to keep the workings of government open, how willing they were to communicate with the media and with the public, as well as their past track record.

D - Meets few expectations:  Mercer School Board. Given the fact it has been two years since the Mercer School Board violated open meetings laws, but only a year since it was put on "probation" for those violations by Iron County district attorney Martin Lipske, it is difficult at this point to determine whether the board's transparency or understanding of the law has improved. Despite having been punished for past wrongdoings, school administrator Erik Torkelson in December 2015 warned a Lakeland Times reporter that he was hesitant to do interviews because of alleged unfair treatment by the paper during the 2013 open meetings case. However, in recent weeks Torkelson has since responded to some interview requests and is currently in the process of providing information related to an open records request filed by the Lakeland Times for discipline records related to a Mercer teacher.

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The $190,000 Lie, or:

 

How to Deceive an Already Deceptive School Board

Mercer School District Administrator Erik Torkelson is either education’s worst researcher or its best disseminator of misinformation.

Again at the January 26 School Board meeting he pretended to know the facts and repeated totally erroneous information about why the School District could not provide free, nutritious breakfasts, lunches and milk for the 50 students not now receiving them under government funded meals programs.

At the meeting he told the School Board, which he controls, what it wanted to hear after backing him in refusing to provide the meals for the 50 deserving students which would help young families. The School District would lose about $143,000 of state and federal money, Torkelson said.

ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE, according to two officials of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction that oversees the government financed meals programs. The school CAN pay for those meals out of its general fund without losing any state or federal money, according to Karrie Isaacson, a DPI school nutrition team director, and Deb Wollin, a nutrition program consultant.

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The Fund 80 Scam

A $223,608 Mercer Taxpayer Ripoff

During the last school year Administrator Erik Torkeslon and his puppet school board (not including Christa Reinert, of course) ripped off Mercer taxpayers to the tune of $223,608 for mostly fictitious Community Service Fund 80 programs. 

Wisconsin State Senator Frank Lasee must have had Mercer in mind when he said that Fund 80 was an “administrator’s dream and a taxpayer’s nightmare.”  He called school administrators “bad actors who are stealing our tax dollars”.  

And this seems to be the case with Mercer where $223,608 of taxpayer money was poured into the phony Fund 80 programs.  Of that amount only $52,652, or 24%, was shown to pay for the alleged, mostly non-existent Community Service programs.  $170,956, or 76%, went into the pockets of Torkelson and a few staff members for purportedly administering the dodgy programs.  Torkelson appears to have taken home $39,741 of that amount.

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Mercer School Taxes

Are We Getting Our Money’s Worth?

When you go shopping and find a big difference in the price of an item at one store compared with a similar item in another store where would you make your purchase?  Common sense would tell you to buy the cheaper item, providing the quality was the same. 

 

But, wait a minute.  What if there was a HUGE difference in the item’s quality between the two stores?    You definitely wouldn’t buy the higher priced item if it was of low quality. That’s the problem Mercer taxpayers are facing with their school taxes.  They are being asked to pay a very high price for poor quality.  

 

Take a look at these cost per student numbers which are based upon expenditures divided by number of students:

 

$24,701 -- Mercer

$12,309 – Rhinelander

$12,700 – Wisconsin

$10,667 – National

$11,500 – Minnesota

$  8,688 -- lowa

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More Harassment!

If you think the harassment of Christa Reinert over her denied request for school (public) records was disgusting, you’ll be appalled by the additional staged event of “character assassination,” at the September Mercer school board meeting.

Administrator Erik Torkelson set the stage by proposing an addition to the school district’s policy manual which would hamstring Christa and prevent her from questioning, criticizing or challenging Torkelson or the school board.  Actually, that’s not how the proposal read, but it made it clear that the action was designed to get rid of Christa who is seen as a threat by probing into questionable school management and spending matters.

Like a carefully scripted and rehearsed soap opera, Kelly Kohegyi came in on cue and stumbled through a Torkelson-written diatribe accusing Christa of everything except murder and mayhem.  It was all ridiculous nonsense, of course.