The Lessons of Watertown

Watertown Main Street Historic District, March 17, 2013. (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

How did Watertown become so ugly and unwelcoming? As recently as 2012 it won national coverage, welcoming then-First Lady Michelle Obama for her campaign encouraging people to drink more water. Obama gave a speech at Watertown High School and the city’s then-Mayor John David told the audience that her appearance was “a great honor” for the city.

Now the school is winning state and national coverage for the school board’s bizarre decision to prevent an instrumental piece from being performed because it would somehow cause harm to the students.

The small city of 22,000 is located on the Rock River about halfway between Milwaukee and Madison, and straddles Jefferson and Dodge counties. During the 1850s it was known for its anti-slavery views and as a welcoming place for German immigrants, at a time when they faced discrimination in many parts of the U.S., historical accounts note. It opened the first kindergarten in the nation in 1856 and later supported the progressive Robert M. LaFollette.

By the 1950s it had become pretty solidly Republican. In 2004, George W. Bush won 63% of its vote and in 2006, 76% of its voter supported the 2006 “Defense of Marriage” state referendum, which opposed gay marriage. Donald Trump carried Watertown with 65% of the vote in 2016, 61% in 2020 and 63% in 2024

In the heat of the 2024 election, the national conservative group Moms for Liberty was pushing for a crackdown on transgender rights, and lobbying school boards to take action. In April 2024 the issue radicalized Watertown, as a more conservative slate of members were elected to its school board.

In November, not long after Trump’s election, the board passed a new policy restricting transgender rights pushed by Moms for Liberty. It overturned the old policy, which had been in effect for eight years and had allowed transgender students to use preferred pronouns and decide which bathrooms to use.

By July 2025 five school board members had resigned, with two citing continued disrespect from fellow board members and an “authoritarian” style of board leadership. You had to be prepared for an “educational culture war” to serve on the board, one departing member warned, as reported by WPR, which has done considerable coverage of the school.

The current board of eight now seems to have a seven-member conservative majority. In September 2025 the board passed a new “controversial issues policy,” which requires teachers to give “effective notice to parents in advance of controversial issues being instructed in the classroom” and allows any parent who opposes this instruction to ask their child to be excused from this instruction.

In October the school band instructor Reid LaDew sent such a letter to parents, explaining that they would be rehearsing and performing a work called “Mother of a Revolution,” composed by “world-renowned African American composer, Omar Thomas.”

In 2019, Thomas became the first Black composer to win the National Band Association/William D. Revelli Memorial Composition Contest and “Mother of a Revolution” is one of his more popular works. DeWayne Roberson, the former band director at Watertown High School, who has also served as an adjudicator at state and national music festivals for 40 years, told WPR that the piece is often played at festivals statewide, including the Wisconsin School Music Association Festival.

At this point readers might want to listen to all or part of the instrumental composition. It’s less than five minutes long and is a fun, subtle yet propulsive piece that is deftly orchestrated and rhythmically sophisticated. Based on the music itself you might imagine a title like Rhythmic Splendor or Up the Mountain. That’s the thing about wordless music, it’s up to your imagination.

That said, the piece was commissioned by the Desert Winds Freedom Band to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising of 1969, one of the key events in the history of gay liberation, and Thomas dedicated the work to Marsha P. Johnson, a trans woman who was one of the Stonewall participants.

In his letter to parents, LaDew explained the class would discuss “Representation in music – how composers highlight historically silenced voices; Music as activism – understanding the role of art in social change; Historical context – connecting the Stonewall uprising and LGBTQ+ history to modern perspectives;” and “Stylistic fusion – blending concert, jazz, and disco idioms.”

But it’s not clear if La Dew actually undertook such discussions; WTMJ, which has also done considerable reporting on Watertown, quoted Sophia Anderson, a student in the band, who said that “while students knew the piece had ties to LGBTQ+ history, they did not receive an in‑class lesson on Stonewall or Marsha P. Johnson because school board policy limits classroom discussion of LGBTQ+ topics.”

But even if the class had any such discussions, they have already occurred and all that was left was to perform the piece on May 18. Instead, the board decided about a week before the concert, and some six months after LaDew informed parents about the piece, that the music must be struck from the program. Just one board member voted no.

There are about 30 students in the band and only one student asked to be excused from this project. If the purpose of the board policy on controversial issues was to give parents a say over instruction, that has happened, so why censor the music? Board vice president Sam Ouweneel offered a Catch-22, describing the controversial issues policy as “a great victory for parental rights” but said it did not prevent the board from judging certain material as unsuitable.

The board’s goal is “ending indoctrination and radical curriculum,” he said. On Sunday the board released a statement saying it cancelled the music due to its “celebration of violence.”

But the music is no more a celebration of violence than the Rite of Spring is an endorsement of pagan rites or the soundtrack of Jaws is pro-killer sharks. The board members have succeeded in making themselves look very foolish.

In the process they have punished the students, who won’t be able to play a composition they’ve rehearsed for months, and punished parents who won’t be able to hear their child perform a technically sophisticated composition. What did they do to deserve this treatment?

Last week hundreds of Watertown high school and middle school students walked out of class to protest the board’s decision, as WPR reported.

On Monday, 775 alumni, staff or former staff, parents and other community members sent a letter to the school board saying LaDew followed the district’s controversial issues policy. “This last-minute intervention is troubling for a number of reasons, not least because it dishonors the hard work students have put into learning the piece.”

But now they may get a chance to play. It’s just been announced that on Wednesday, the composer Omar Thomas will travel to Wisconsin on Wednesday to conduct a performance of “A Mother of A Revolution” at Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church in Watertown. The ensemble will feature musicians with roots in the local community, including area students.