04/10/2026
To Tosans concerned about the future reform of our school district:
The 2030 Slate — a nonpartisan slate of four candidates — was the first organized reform effort to compete under the new at-large, winner-take-all rules. While it did not prevail at the polls, it did reveal something important.
What stands out to me is that this year’s slate was meaningfully more potent as a bloc than the opposition field was last year. In 2025, under the old seat-by-seat contest rules, the combined candidacies of Chris Merker, Kaitlin Lemke, Shannon Malnory-Silbernagel, and Troy Woodard received 30,243 votes, amounting to 37.8% of the two-group total across their respective races. In 2026, the 2030 Slate — Heather Birk, Todd Koehler, Chris Merker, and Dan Stemper — received 27,427 combined votes, but its share rose to 43.8%, compared with 56.2% for the incumbent-aligned group. In other words, while the slate received fewer raw votes this year, it performed materially better relative to the other side.
That becomes even more significant in context. Wauwatosa turnout was 70.83% in the April 1, 2025 spring election. In the April 7, 2026 spring election, turnout was 54.19%, based on the official ward-level voter and ballot totals. At the same time, the city’s Supreme Court vote was almost identical across both years: 74.2% to 25.8% in 2025, and 74.7% to 25.3% in 2026. That suggests the broader partisan environment remained very strong, yet the 2030 Slate still improved the reform share by roughly six points. To me, that is significant evidence that the slate largely succeeded in presenting a nonpartisan message capable of reaching beyond the prevailing partisan current, especially because the incumbent-aligned candidates clearly identified with — and received support from — the predominant party.
My recommendation is that future reform efforts should build on this model and continue to run as a clearly nonpartisan slate. School board elections remain one of the few arenas in public life where a community can still be asked to think first about stewardship, judgment, governance, and the needs of children rather than national political identity. If reformers remain disciplined, run together, and continue to train the electorate to value nonpartisanship in school board races, I believe that share can grow over time. This year’s result, while not a victory, appears to me to be proof of concept.
I wish the district well in the years ahead, and I encourage the future reform-minded candidates to study the efforts of the 2030 Slate and build on what was learned here.
Regards,
Chris Merker
2030 Task Force
