Some Mequon-Thiensville school board members face recall election Nov. 2

MEQUON, Wis. (CBS 58) -- Last month, Recall MTSD School Board submitted more than 18-thousand signatures from people in the community, enough to warrant a special election. Wednesday, Sept. 22, the board met to certify the election.

"The action is a mandatory duty of the board of education as a governing body," school board president Shelley Burns said.

Amber Schroeder, an organizer of the petition, said some are unhappy with declining test scores in the district in the past five years. She references the district's "Milestone's for Secondary Success" for those scores.

She said key benchmarks are down since 2015. She also said some parents are unhappy with COVID restrictions and contact tracing.

"Now we will start campaigning our candidates and getting them ready for that. We've got a very short campaign time, only six weeks," she said. "We're excited to move forward with the process. We have a lot of people that spent a lot of time and put a lot of work into this recall effort."

The four board members facing the recall are: Wendy Francour, Erik Hollander, Akram Khan and Chris Schultz.

"The recall is an attempt to hijack our board and America's democratic election process, with misinformation, politically aligned scare tactics," board member Wendy Francour said.

Francour said there is a lot of misinformation with this recall and the district is still performing at a high level.

"We're number two in the state, according to the most recent DPI state report cards. Our kids are thriving," she said.

Francour said the recall has become too political, which has no place on a school board.

"I'm just asking the voters to seek the truth behind the recall effort and to understand as a public school district, we are bound to get the facts out and educate all of our communities and children to the best of our ability," she said.

In a statement, board member Chris Schultz said:

"The actions today mark one more step towards the completion of this destructive recall process. I would much rather be using my time, talents, and energy for positive effect, than to be battling against distortion of the truth. I optimistically look forward to the community coming back together in support of our amazing District, students, and staff."

Board member Akram Khan said:

"It disheartens me to see that the recall group has divided the community with detorsion about how the board operates. They either do not understand how Policy Governance boards work or chose to ignore the fact. In either case, I can assure the community of Mequon-Thiensville that the Board did not abdicate our responsibilities to an un-elected official this fall."

Schroeder said the four candidates running against the current board members on Nov. 2 will be announced in two weeks.