Memorial Day to a show of hands
Four months, start to finish. No PAC, no party, no staff, no money. Just parents and a lot of driveways.
It started with a question nobody could answer
Why can't a qualified neighbor run for school board? Not "why would they lose" — why are they not allowed on the ballot. The answer turned out to be a map drawn in 1963, when Middleton had fewer than five thousand people and most of our neighborhoods were farm fields. It had never been reviewed. It had never been voted on. Under Wisconsin law, the only way to change it was a citizen petition and a vote at the district's Annual Meeting.
The summer of the clipboard
Wisconsin doesn't count an online signature. Every name had to be collected on paper, in person, with a circulator's certification — so neighbors carried sheets to farmers markets, youth baseball games, the Pioneer Pointe pool, block parties, church coffee hours, National Night Out, and a great many front doors.
Circulators across all five Areas gave up evenings and weekends. People signed on hoods of cars and on porches in the rain. The legal threshold was 500 signatures.
605 signatures, confirmed by the district
Filed with the district clerk and verified: 605 valid signatures, more than a hundred past the 500 the statute requires — every one of them pen on paper, gathered by hand. The petition went onto the Annual Meeting agenda, which meant that for the first time since 1963, the question would actually be put to the electors.
The room decided it — 60 to 46
Middleton High School Performing Arts Center. The district moved the meeting to a larger room because they expected a crowd, and the crowd came. Pizza outside at 6:30. A budget review first. Then the motion, a second, and an open floor where anyone who disagreed spoke first, on purpose.
Wisconsin allows no absentee ballot and no proxy at an Annual Meeting. Only the electors physically present could vote. One hundred and six of them did.