Monthly Archives: August 2023

WPR journalist honored for audio documentary

In 1947, fourteen years before the famous Freedom Rides of the early 1960s, a small group of courageous civil rights activists boarded buses and trains to fight segregation laws in the South. Their little-known story was captured by Wisconsin Public Radio’s Robin Washington, who brought the survivors of the ride together to retrace their trip and film it for what would become an acclaimed public television documentary in 1995.

Last year, Washington marked the 75th anniversary of their ride by adapting the program for broadcast on WPR. Now that radio adaptation, “You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow!,” has won best documentary honors in the National Association of Black Journalists’ “Salute To Excellence” awards. It will be rebroadcast on WPR’s “Simply Superior” at 10 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 11 in the Duluth-Superior region. It can also be heard online anytime at . 

“You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow!” chronicles the Journey of Reconciliation by an interracial group of activists who sought to force Southern states to abide by a 1946 Supreme Court ruling that had outlawed segregation in interstate transportation. The group was met with arrests, a physical attack, and ultimately, 30 days on a chain gang. 

Their story has become the lifework of Washington, the host of “Simply Superior,” who is passionate about sharing this important piece of history with a new generation of audiences.

“With racial inequities still plaguing our nation, this story is absolutely relevant today,” Washington said. “Although all of the riders have since passed, they left a blueprint for activism and a roadmap toward justice that can inspire us all — and that we can hear told to us in their own words.” 

WPR’s “Simply Superior” is a news and public affairs program focused on issues in the Twin Ports and Northwestern Wisconsin. Guests include politicians, businesspeople, artists and cultural leaders. The program airs Fridays at 10 a.m. on The Ideas Network stations 91.3/Superior and 90.9/Ashland. It is repeated Friday evenings at 7 p.m. on WPR stations 89.9/Brule, 88.5/Superior and 104.7/Washburn/Ashland/Bayfield. Archives are available at

Column: Strike a balance on student privacy

In recent years, public schools in Wisconsin and across the country have come under intense scrutiny. At issue are some of the most politically engaging, high-stakes issues of our time: what we teach children about race, gender and identity; how we police the line between free speech and anti-discrimination law; and the role of parents in shaping their childrens’ world view.

These are political questions, but they are also highly personal, reaching into the most intimate details of children’s and families’ lives.

That puts schools in a significant bind. On the one hand, the public has a right to know how public schools act, meaning that schools have a duty to be transparent. On the other hand, students have special rights to privacy enshrined in both state and federal law. How do schools balance the transparency they owe the public with the confidentiality they owe their students?

Schools across Wisconsin are approaching these challenges in wildly different ways — some reasonable; others nonsensical and legally insupportable. In my work as an attorney representing students and families in school matters, I’ve encountered a grab bag.

For example, at one extreme, I recently filed a public records request asking a school district to provide records showing the district’s disciplinary response to incidents where students used racial slurs. Essentially, I was asking the district to search its disciplinary record-keeping system for incidents coded as involving racial harassment (about 50 for the requested time period, I believe), redact any information that could identify individual pupils, and provide a document showing the school’s response (detention, suspension, counseling, etc.) in each case. The district refused to provide those records, claiming it would violate student privacy.

At the other extreme, I have represented parents whose children’s highly sensitive information has been made public through open records requests. The recurring pattern goes something like this:

A parent emails a school administrator highly sensitive information — for example, asking that a child be barred from accessing library books with sexual content, or notifying the school that the child is navigating issues related to gender identity. Another community member (often politically motivated) files an open record request asking for all emails to the district addressing issues of library book access or student gender identity. The school then releases the highly sensitive email — sometimes with no redactions, other times just deleting the child’s name but leaving in enough detail to easily discern which student it applies to.

These examples are extreme, but they’re also not uncommon. They speak to the lack of coherent understanding in Wisconsin of how school district transparency can be reconciled with student privacy.

Fortunately, there is a workable solution. Under federal law, schools are prohibited from releasing “personally identifiable information” about students. That means that schools can share records, data and information with the public, so long as they make sure to redact any language or details that can be tied to an individual student.

Wisconsin school districts that diverge from this practice standard claim to be acting based on differences between the federal and state student privacy laws. But the federal approach strikes the right balance. It would, for instance, allow districts to redact identifying information from the racial harassment disciplinary records while showing what (if any) discipline was applied.

This shared understanding of the requirements of state student privacy laws will restore consistency between school districts, ensure that sensitive information regarding individual students is kept confidential, and give communities the big-picture information they need to understand what’s happening in their schools.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (), a group dedicated to open government. Elisabeth Lambert is the founder and principal of the Wisconsin Education Law and Policy Hub ().

Gazette journalist joins Big Radio

Janesville Gazette journalist Neil Johnson is joining Big Radio covering southern Wisconsin news.

Johnson brings with him 14 years of experience at the Gazette covering communities in and around the Janesville area.

“In a local news environment, the independent aspect of being the person in the room who disseminates it … that is just trying to get at the truth of the matter and bring that to people … that’s important to me,”  Johnson said.

CEO of Big Radio, Ben Thompson, said he takes pride in the efforts to bolster local programming at a time when big broadcast companies are cutting positions.

“Local news, information, and entertainment is what people look for from their local stations and Big Radio injects local news, sports, entertainment, and conversation wherever we can across our ten-station group,” Thompson said. “Neil Johnson will certainly add to that aspect of our local mission in a positive way.” 

Johnson began his Big Radio newsroom duties Monday.