DE PERE (NBC 26) — "Highly surprised and, quite honestly, confused."
That was Superintendent Chris Thompson's response when he found out the Unified School District of De Pere was under investigation by the State Department of Public Instruction (DPI).
The issue on the table is the practice of three-cueing, where kids learn to read words based on meaning, visual signs, and syntax.
The state banned it, effective this year. Other states have also banned the practice, saying it hinders reading proficiency.
"We removed this from the curriculum several years ago," Thompson said. "We've been explicit with our teachers that it cannot be part of a curriculum."
Thompson is adamant.
"There is no three-cueing in our curriculum," he said.
But board member Melissa Niffenegger raised the issue with the state, filing a concern in late September.
"The reason why I'm concerned is because there's some language in graphs and things that I've been given, that I'm concerned that they may not have taken it fully out, and they may not be aware of it," she said.
The district's Director of Elementary Curriculum and Instruction, Kathy Van Pay, wrote a full-throated response to the concerns.
Van Pay wrote, in part: "I have never been told at a public meeting that I or the school district was not following the law, but on 9/23/24 I was and the district was without evidence."
Niffenegger says she home-schools her children and has dug into the issue with an organization called Decoding Dyslexia Wisconsin, which also opposes three-cueing.
"I think that's where we are seeing the issues that we have currently, right now," said Kari Baumann, the organization's state co-lead and education director. "Guidance from DPI does not equal guidance from the law."
"I'm going through the education myself of what is the best thing for my children," Niffenegger said, making it clear she was not speaking on behalf of the entire school board. "And as a community member, I want what's best for the kids in my community as well."
Thompson said anyone can file a concern with DPI — but made it clear parents did not issue one in this case.
"It's really something that you would expect to be coming from a parent, however, not something that would be coming from a community member," he said. "It would be a parent, somebody that has a concern with the instruction being provided to their child."
Thompson also says the investigation will cost the district money.
"You're looking at the hourly salary of every teacher and every administrator that is being part of this," he said. "That's going to go into the tens of thousands of dollars for this investigation."
Niffenegger says another layer of her concern was being denied access to classrooms to see the district's literacy curriculum in person.
"It's very odd that, as a school board member, that they don't want me into the school," she said. "So that's bringing up another red flag to me."
She also believes the district is trying to stifle her perspective.
"I understand another board member said you were retaliating against the board by filing this concern," we asked her. "Do you want to respond to that at all?"
"The reason why I decided to put up a concern with DPI is because those board norms if they were in place, would take a lot of my voice away as a school board member, and I wouldn't have been able to bring a lot of my concerns up, based on what they wanted to add to policy," Niffenegger said. "So I guess you can say that is a retaliation, but I don't believe it's retaliation. I believe I thought I was doing what was best for the situation I could see in the future and for the children in the area."
The superintendent says he expects the DPI investigation to take between 45 and 90 days, but DPI did not give an exact timeline.
The USDD board meets again on October 28 and is expected to discuss board norms and policies, but not necessarily the investigation.
