June 22, 2020 at 12:46 p.m.
'I'm very happy with my career': Jacobi bids farewell to SDR after 29 years
'I'm very happy with my career': Jacobi bids farewell to SDR after 29 years
Over the course of those years, 29 of which were spent in Rhinelander, Jacobi has been involved in every level of education. She started as a elementary teacher and rose through the ranks to become superintendent following the retirement of Roger Erdahl in 2013.
The June 15 meeting of the district's Board of Education was Jacobi's last before handing over the reins to Eric Burke, the former Port Washington High School principal who was hired in early February.
School board president Ron Counter took advantage of the occasion to laud Jacobi's contributions to the district, the community and its children.
"You served the school district as a teacher, a principal, curriculum director and finally as superintendent," he said. "During Kelli's term as superintendent, she has improved communications with the community, relationships with business and industry, relationship with staff and has used a data-driven philosophy which has advanced curriculum. Her greatest asset has been her approach to students, ensuring that all have been given equal opportunity to achieve their educational goals. Her compassion toward students, and their needs, is very noteworthy of Kelli's character."
A Bulldog at heart
A native of Des Moines, Iowa, Jacobi graduated from Drake University in 1980 with a degree in special education.
"I was an August graduate, and that year, 200 teachers in Des Moines and surrounding districts were laid off," she said. "So there were no jobs in Des Moines, so I subbed for a year. I enjoyed it, but it is as hard as people say it is. I was very young, so if I subbed in the high school, I was like one of the kids wandering the halls. I did a lot of subbing with high-needs kids."
From there, she moved to Florida where she taught for 10 years.
"I taught fourth, fifth and sixth grade for a couple years each. I liked change," she said. "Once I master something and enjoy it for a while, then I'm ready for what's next, a new challenge."
The next challenge was moving to Rhinelander from Tampa.
"My sister lived here for several years, and I met the man I ended up marrying because he was friends with my sister's husband, and he lived here," Jacobi said. "And it was then 'where are we going to live once we get married?' And I came up here in the summer when it was beautiful and got a job right away. They needed special ed teachers badly the year I applied."
All means all
Over the course of her career, Jacobi said she came to the conclusion that the "textbook model" of how to teach doesn't work for all children.
"All kids learn differently," she explained. "And I was a 'book learner' as I grew up, I loved books, I could learn anything by giving me book. But through so many years of teaching, not all kids are like that. And so I had to work on whatever strategies that met kids' needs. It wasn't how I wanted to teach, it was how I needed to teach to make sure I met their needs."
As a principal and later district administrator, she was able to "expand that to more students" and show teachers this approach was a win/win approach. This led to the "all means all" approach the district has lived by the past few years.
"It's because I had a rock solid team," Jacobi said. "I fought for it, Maggie Peterson (director of learning support), has been hugely supportive of that. Teri Maney (former director of instruction) was before she left last year. It was the perfect opportunity to make sure that we were taking care of every student, even if every lesson plan, piece of curriculum, everything had to look different and provide many options to make sure they were mastering whatever the learning target was."
While this approach to teaching became second nature for many teachers, not all were on board with the changes.
"One of my problems was the repetitive nature of a lot of homework. If, as a math student, I've shown mastery of whatever the skill is, say three digit multiplication," Jacobi said. "Many students get that old school homework paper that has 50 more problems on it of the same thing, just different numbers, we have a lot of students who are going to say 'uh uh, I'm not doing that. I showed you I know how to do it, now either give me enrichment, challenge me, what else can I do to extend my learning, but don't make me do repetitive work.' There are kids who are going to need that repetition, that extra practice before they're able to master (a skill). Some master things rather quickly, and some it takes some repetition. So we all have to pay really good attention - and I mean we as all teachers, all educators - to make sure we're looking at what those needs are. Because we don't want to turn kids off."
NCES planner
"I love teaching, but I could meet the needs of more kids by doing a different kind of job. So, as a teacher, I was with one class of 20, 24 kids. But then when I was the principal and then teaching principal at NCES (Northwoods Community Elementary School), it was really all of the children in that building," Jacobi said. "So I was able to work with more families, just expand my love of working with kids."
To that end, Jacobi was involved with the planning and establishment of both Rhinelander charter schools, Northwoods Community Elementary School and Northwoods Community Secondary School. The schools were two of the first charters in the northern part of the state and she noted that other districts wanted to learn how to replicate them, coming to Rhinelander to study them.
"A year or two before the charter school opened, Roger Erdahl put out a memo to all district staff; 'we got to fill this school, what are we going to do? If you have ideas, share them,'" Jacobi recalled. "And I was teaching at West School at the time, and a couple of people started talking and there was all this charter money from the state, and a couple of us started working on what that would look like. It was one of us for the elementary school and one for secondary and (we) put proposals together. We got them to Roger and he said 'go for it.'"
The next year was spent putting together teams of staff to run the two schools and coming up with the curriculum, she continued.
"NCES has a very small population because it is so rural," Jacobi said. "And so with all of the Harshaw, Cassian and Woodboro kids, it's like 60 kids, that's all. So I went out there to teach, but also to plan how we were going to do this charter, start marketing it, working on enrollment and putting our teams together. Because not all the teachers that were at the school wanted to continue. We didn't push it, if you didn't want to be part of a project-based learning school, then we'll transfer you someplace else. And then we pulled people who were really interested in it"
The school opened in 2004, and remained a charter school for 15 years before the charter was dissolved due to changes in state law.
Jacobi said she is very proud of how well NCES turned out. If it weren't for the change in state law, she believes it would still be operating as a charter.
"I'm very happy with my career, I'm very proud of what I was able to accomplish," she said. "That's one of the highlights, that it was so successful for so long."
"There is going to come to a time when they have the same problem. What do we do with that school with so few students in that attendance area? A charter, at least right now, isn't going to be an option, but it could be another kind of school that's just not called a charter. You know, a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) or STEAM (STEM plus art), something that is good for kids, a very hands-on (curriculum)."
Referendums
Throughout her tenure as superintendent, on several occasions Jacobi and the district have had to go to local taxpayers for permission to exceed the revenue cap in the form of referendums. Each of these requests proved to be a challenge.
"That was one of the things I worked on the hardest when I took over as superintendent," Jacobi said. "Because it is part of our world now. Until we change the funding formula through the state, it's going to be part of our world. So that was one of the things that I took on right away was talking about it, getting it out there. This is how much money we get, this is what we're doing with it. Marta (Kwiatkowski, former district business director) was fabulous at that, at helping with the messaging. Once we took that on, we wanted to make sure that when referendum time came, we weren't dropping a bomb on our community, that they were prepared for it. So when I did speeches at the capital or wrote articles for the newspapers, newsletters for the state, I was sure to share those with our community."
"Did everyone read them? Absolutely not. But some people did," she added.
This consistent messaging from district administration made it easier for the voters to understand the situation and vote in favor of the measures, Jacobi believes.
"I've left a lot of information for Eric - we've met a couple times - so he'll at least know kind of my process the last time," Jacobi said. "I'm not telling him what to do, because I get it, it's his job, but I've found if I did X, Y, Z, it helped in the long run because people understood better. Because I've shared information all along, they felt better prepared. And he'll need to do that prepping for the next referendum."
With the district having to go to the voters in a couple years, and given that the district has earmarked nearly $6.5 million from the general fund to pay for the $8.5 million for the Hodag Sports Complex and air-supported dome currently under construction, Jacobi said careful monitoring of the fund balance will be key. There is also the possibility that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction will take excess fund balance cash from frugal districts and redistribute it to cash-strapped districts.
"We've been very frugal, we've put a lot of savings that we didn't just spend it when we had extra money, which in my mind, huge kudos to Marta because she was a huge help with that. But he'll (Burke) have to get into that, too. We've reduced the referendum amount because of that fund balance, and if the state starts talking like school districts have too much money, we're going to start pulling it, we can't do that," she said.
The dome
If the dome proves to be as popular as expected - at least two sports tournaments have already been booked - Jacobi agreed it could prove to be an important revenue stream for the district. Over the course of her career, she said she has never seen anything like how the dome project went from concept to earth being moved. Private donations towards the project now total over $2 million, with more being accepted.
"It was shocking how well it fell into place," she said. "We had huge community support. I think starting it with that huge donation ($500,000 from Dr. Lee Swank and family) and the community support that backed it, it was astounding. We wouldn't be anywhere near where we are if we hadn't gotten that very, very substantial Swank donation."
When asked to name her top five career achievements, Jacobi repeated that she is satisfied with her body of work.
"I'm very happy with my career," she reiterated. "I don't think there is any part of it that I regret, I loved teaching. I still, as superintendent, really, really enjoyed getting invitations. I went and read with the early childhood kids and just read stories. Going to the open houses, the picnics, the project days. That was wonderful for me, I really enjoyed it."
Jacobi is not the only key district staffer about to wrap up her tenure with SDR.
Jane Walkowski will also end her long career with the district as the superintendent's administrative assistant on June 30, and Jacobi said she "can't even imagine" being able to do her job without her.
"She has so much historical knowledge and just the knowledge of how things work from this office," Jacobi said. "We'll talk, we need to set up an agenda for whatever meetings coming up next. Here are my notes, my notes are like a page of bullet points, it's like I feel sorry for someone who has to decipher that mess, and she will take it and, boom. She is going to be missed."
COVID-19 pandemic
Jacobi said she doesn't believe there will be a going away party for herself or Walkowski due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which forced a change in how students were taught in the last three months of the school year.
"It's like everybody is being really careful," Jacobi said. "When we have meetings, we normally use the Professional Development Center so we're all apart. We've all got either elderly parents, or grandchildren that we're taking this really seriously and protecting ourselves. So it's not a great time for a party."
The district's shift from in-classroom to virtual instruction was something Jacobi said she had never experienced before in her career. Despite that, after the large number of snow days the district had in the 2018-19 school year, the district had a plan for how to approach to extended absences.
"We were thinking more in line with a remote learning plan for snow days," Jacobi noted. "Because, if you remember, that year we had a million of them, well not a million, probably eight, but that was unheard of. We know we had so many students that missed a lot of education."
As the district wrestled with having the students make up the missed days, SDR did what a lot of other districts did and came up with a remote learning plan.
"So we jumped on it," she said. "We can make sure that we have Chromebooks available down as low as the kids are capable, and we just started putting things together. So, when we started getting nervous earlier this year in March, we looked at what do we have in place already and then what are we going to need to do?"
She said the administrative team pulled everything together, and finalized the plan "pretty quickly."
"But I have a great team," she noted. "We took two days for professional development for staff, one (four) planning, and we were off."
"It is absolutely something that will be part of superintendent programs from now on," she noted. "Because nobody would have dreamed to prepare people on how to prepare for that type of situation because you're pulling in experts but from so many different areas because we got to be sure that I'm not missing an important piece. Maybe Linda Conlon from the health department is going to say 'now did you think of this?'"
In the end, Jacobi said there were many events throughout her career "that could not be planned for or prepared for in any way."
Now, of course, she is planning her future.
"(I plan on) spending more time with my parents, family, and especially my grandkids," she said. "I had hoped to travel, but those plans will have to be rescheduled for sometime in the future."
Jamie Taylor may be reached via email at [email protected].
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