Falls Forward
Academic focus in Sheboygan Falls schools
Teaching excellence
Focus on attracting and retaining the best educators, with pay based on merit.
American heritage
Focus on the core academics that built our nation – not special interests or DEI.
Focused spending
Bring transparent, thorough planning to building projects – not subsidies.
About Us
Falls Forward helps schools in Sheboygan Falls better focus on teaching the skills, character, and wisdom students need to build strong families and careers.
We are a community group dedicated to fostering a school environment that prioritizes educational excellence, fiscal responsibility, and student safety. We advocate for policies to hire and retain the best educators, empower parents, promote transparency, and teach America’s heritage to its next generation of citizens.
We inform the community about our schools and school board candidates, and organize community service projects such as book drives.
Leadership
Stephanie Arndt
Chairman
Jacob Immel
Vice chairman
Ed Brey
TreasurerPartner organization
Issues
Issues facing Sheboygan Falls schools
Focus spending
Our schools would benefit from upgrades and maintenance, especially in infrastructure, science, and technology. Past referendum proposals averaged about $19,000 and $13,000 per household.
The district should be more transparent about costs, tradeoffs, and alternatives. It should achieve greater community buy-in through more thorough planning and by avoiding subsidies.
Proposed location for the CTE rebuild (#4), planned at 57% of the inflation-adjusted cost of the entire middle school
2024-2025 professional staff salaries.
Teacher compensation is 7.2% above state average.
Pay teachers based on merit
Our pay system is flexible for hiring and transfers but afterward goes by seniority. Research focused on Wisconsin schools shows that merit pay attracts and retains the best educators at wages fair to teachers and taxpayers.
A more market-driven pay system would build on our new reading and math curriculums to improve student proficiency rates and offer more advanced and dual-credit classes.
Teach America’s heritage
Our new academic standards omit the previous standards’ requirements for precise language and standard English. They also embrace DEI, prioritize “social justice”, and include 30 instances where teachers must incorporate “power in inequitable practices” and use students’ “home languages and dialects”.
Also gone is analysis of “works of exceptional craft and thought” and foundational U.S. documents such as the Declaration of Independence. We should eliminate DEI and teach about America’s heritage as a great nation from a balanced historical perspective.
“Equity”-centric approach to education in the approved standards
The bottom of a Sheboygan Falls sex ed curriculum web page
Remove Planned Parenthood agenda from sex ed
The high school sex ed curriculum uses Planned Parenthood web pages that offer students to book an abortion or “gender-affirming care” appointment, and tout Planned Parenthood affiliates as “trusted sources of health care and education for people of all genders”.
Missing from the curriculum is instruction on adoption and the sex binary. The sex ed content should better align with science, student safety, and community values.
Ensure sex ed content review
Counseling material presented to all 5th graders taught there are three sexes using a “Genderbread Person” and referred students to LGBTQ websites presenting far-left sex ed material.
In the high school, the Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) teaches sex ed topics and glorifies trans identities, which contribute to a bandwagon effect that magnifies mental health problems in at-risk youth.
All forms of sex ed instruction should undergo community review and school board approval to ensure it is scientifically accurate, unbiased, and age-appropriate.
Note: The counseling material was replaced when the counselor involved left the district, but this was well after the resolution was put forth.
Stop sponsoring political activism
The district-sponsored Gender and Sexuality Alliance, which meets during school and is led by paid teachers, promotes its political viewpoints to students. It also furthers the school-to-clinic pipeline by advertising LGBTQ “affirming care” services, even while clubs like the Boy Scouts aren’t allowed to advertise.
Taxpayer-funded schools should remain neutral. The best way for our schools to foster a safe and welcoming environment that shows dignity and respect to all students is through clubs that focus on building character, not politics.
Welcome everyone, without identity politics
Our schools display the “Progress Pride” flag, which according to the Wisconsin DPI represents “trans people” and “non-white individuals”. Learn more
Certain classrooms label themselves as “Safe Zones”, a disservice to all the other teachers continually ensuring every classroom is safe. Learn more
We should ensure classrooms are welcoming to everyone by keeping discrimination and identity politics out of the classroom.
Signs posted in a Sheboygan Falls High School classroom
Increase academic depth
Some students learn in classrooms with walls lined with polarizing political signs. Civics education should emphasize objective data and critical thinking, not one-sided surface-level slogans.
Stats
Statistics about the Sheboygan Falls School District
Proficiency
English: 36.8%
Math: 41.6%
Percent of students who met proficiency standards
State comparison
Proficiency: −2.4%
Teacher pay: +7.2%
Student proficiency and teacher compensation compared to state averages
Referendums
Fall: $19,141
Spring: $13,472
Average cost per household of the proposed referendums
(Total cost divided by number of district households – learn more)
Spending
National statistics showing the value of Career & Technical Education
Trades boost
Electricians: +$614,480 (+33%)
Machinists: +$184,480 (+10%)
Welders: +$108,480 (+6%)
Median additional 40-year-career income over high school diploma baseline
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