Nicolet's wild week ended with parent arrest

Glendale - Homecoming week discipline problems at Nicolet High School last week weren't just for student pranksters.

A tumultuous week ended with a parent and former School Board president taken down in the school parking lot by police breaking up a mock keg party, according to a police report released Thursday.

On game night in the parking lot last Friday for the football game - the home team would fall to Grafton, 27-0 - a group of students busted out a keg in the parking lot, drank from red cups in an apparent drinking party, though only root beer was coming out of the tap.

"It was staged to look like a high school beer party," District Administrator Rick Monroe said. "I just can't accept that."

So administrators asked them to remove the keg, but students and a few parents resisted. Police arrived and the keg was eventually put away, but the police report said Jennifer Peltz, a parent, booster club president and former School Board president, told police she was donating it to the concession stand.

Monroe said the stand only sells drinks from bottles, and the students had been putting their mouths on the tap, during their keg stands, so they could not accept the keg and asked Peltz to remove it.

The police report said Peltz was "rude and noncompliant," and was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct after being taken to the ground and handcuffed.

Calls and emails to Peltz requesting comment were not returned.

It was that kind of week at Nicolet, beginning with administrators getting tough on a racy event students planned.

Wednesday of homecoming week was slotted as a pajama day, but seniors traditionally plan their own theme. This year, they tried to organize a dress-up day themed "LAX (lacrosse) bros and preppy hoes."

Girls who wore skirts too short for administrators' comfort were asked to make adjustments to comply with the student handbook, Monroe said. No one was suspended for wardrobe problems, he said, but that's not the story that has spread among students.

"That misunderstanding created some anxiety and angst toward the administration," he said. Friday morning school officials discovered someone had broken a window into the swim coach's office, thrown a laptop in the pool, vandalized walls with profanities and "Kill People" in washable paint, and hung a swimming mannequin from a noose. Reports claim the mannequin had Principal Greg DePue's name on it, but Monroe denies this.

That led police to begin investigating the break-in, and Monroe canceled an afternoon pep rally for fear of a major disruption.

Monroe said the facts have been muddled through rumors, so he will send out a letter to parents early next week to set the story straight.

"The message I want to send out to parents is that we're here to support the kids," Monroe said. "I think people in the community either want to believe something different, or were told something different."