Category Archives: Best Practices

by | July 15, 2008 · 10:45 am

Dan Nerad Talks 4-Year old Kindergarten

From WISC-TV

One thing that needs to be corrected is this: “After the first year, the state kicks in two-thirds of the funding and covers the full cost after four years.”

What happens is that the district must absorb all costs the first year, the second year and beyond the students are added to the member count (on a prorated basis, since 4-K is not full time) and figured in the three-year rolling average calculations for the revenue cap. This would mean they would be counted at 1/3 for the second year. 2/3 for the third year and fully thereafter. Like all other students in Madison, the state share of costs would be based on relative property wealth.  In Madison this translates into about 40% state funding.

I’ve been trying to track down how Green Bay managed the start up costs. No luck yet, but I’ll find out and post here.

One answer is via a referendum.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under "education finance", AMPS, Best Practices, Budget, finance, Local News, Referenda, referendum, School Finance

by | July 14, 2008 · 8:57 pm

We Are Not Alone #21

As Madison prepares to discuss a school operating referendum, it is important to remember that we are not alone.

In the past two years districts in Wisconsin have held over 150 operating and maintenance referenda simply to continue the quality and diversity of educational programming that they have had in the past. This isn’t because of local mismanagement; these referenda are a product of a school finance system designed to fail. The referenda aren’t about adding back things have been cut or expanding the good schools do by adding things like 4-year-old kindergarten, elementary foreign languages, more teacher training in things like differentiation or classroom management, support for college prep work for students not yet on the college track…(I could go on and on). These referenda are about not losing ground, about stopping the cuts and staunching the bleeding.

Many districts, like Madison, are simultaneously struggling with the annual cuts dictated by the state finance system and needs or desires for new schools (based on either inadequate facilities or population growth in areas without sufficient capacity). In La Crosse, this combination is reaching critical point.

In April the voters of La Crosse passed a five-year nonrecurring $4,175,000 a year operating referendum (5,701-4,993), but defeated a $35 million renovating and building referendum (5,144-5,417). The $35 million would have paid for a new school, allowed the district to close two schools and upgrade the “HVAC, safety, and security systems” in others (including new energy efficient equipment to create long term savings). Some of these upgrades were termed “urgent.”

“Urgent” needs don’t go away. Now the La Crosse district is contemplating what to do next.

On Monday July 8, 2008 the Board of Education voted 6-3 to take the “no referendum” option off the table.

President Christine Clair said the vote will keep board conversations centered on the administration’s other options, which include asking for the capital improvements sought in the April referendum, only separated into two questions, and addressing only the facility needs.

Board member Neil Drusky voted against eliminating the “no referendum” option:

He suggested closing two schools, which would take two to three boilers off line and buy the school district more time while the community gets involved. He also said he didn’t recall knowing about the boilers until the referendum process. [Ed Note: Those energy efficiency issues again.]

The administration will report back to the Board on July 21, 2008. Eight options (or combinations of options) are being analyzed:

  • Eliminate SAGE
  • Close a school
    • Most agree a school has to be closed, but there is disagreement about which one. It is estimated that closing a school would save about $410,000.
  • Close two schools
    • This would “eliminate the cost of replacing two to three boilers and other building repairs” but require “massive redrawing of elementary boundaries.”
  • Build a new North Side elementary school
    • “Consolidating Franklin Elementary School and Roosevelt Elementary/Coulee Montessori in a new building at the Franklin site would provide an improved learning environment and bring together the North Side community.” Maintenance issues at two of the district’s oldest — and neediest — buildings would go away, and staffing costs would be reduced by $410,000 or more.“

  • April referendum — lite
    • “This referendum proposal for $21.5 million in capital improvements would address the same facility needs the board put forth in its April package, but without a new school. Safety and security equipment would be installed in schools, as would new heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. Facility needs such as bathroom and locker remodeling, window replacement, kitchen expansion, and classroom, elevator and stair tower additions also would be addressed.”

  • A scaled-back referendum
    • “Some board members have deemed a few items on the facility needs list to be not as urgent as others. A $15 million facility needs referendum would address three-fourths of the total package with a reduced effect on annual property taxes”
  • Dip into fund balance
    • “Some board members have suggested the district dip into its $33 million fund balance to fix a few of the more “urgent” needs. They asked administration Monday to report back July 21 on the feasibility of using from $5 million to $10 million for repairs to reduce the amount potentially sought by referendum.” [director of business services Janet] Rosseter said in May that the money only should be used for unforeseen expenditures or revenue shortfalls, and the district’s needs — although deemed “urgent” and “necessary” — don’t rise to that level. She stood by that statement Thursday. [Ed Note: This is Ms Rosseter’s opinion and it is her job to share that opinion with the Board, but it is the elected Board’s job to make these kind of judgments. The DPI page of guidance on Fund Balances does not oppose or support districts employing Fund Balances in the manner being contemplated.]
  • Use instructional dollars
    • “School board members have said that without passing a capital referendum, instructional dollars are at stake because the budget is too tight.Without a passed building referendum, board member Connie Troyanek said, the board will be forced to close at least one school and raise class sizes because “we don’t have any money” to make the necessary repairs.”

Much to contemplate. Hard decisions, no real good options.  Without a successful referendum, Madison will face similar choices…larger classes, closed schools, programs eliminated…

A few final words from La Crosse to add to the mix:

From Board Clerk Mary Larson:

“There is so much going for this district. If we could just get our basic systems in order,” the district would be more appealing to outside families who want to take advantage of open enrollment.

I think that should be “if the state would allow us to get our basic systems in order.”

From Board Member Deb Suchla who spoke of a:

“bidding war” between the school board and the community. Each time, the board comes back to voters asking for a little less money,…“That’s not … public policy, and that’s not how you do good work,” Suchla said.

Suchla is right, it isn’t how you do good work, it isn’t [good] public policy, but it is how we fund education in Wisconsin.

Governor Doyle? State Legislators? Are you paying attention?

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under "education finance", AMPS, Best Practices, Budget, education, finance, Local News, Referenda, referendum, School Finance, Take Action, Uncategorized, We Are Not Alone

by | July 10, 2008 · 9:42 am

New Blog – Mica Pollock, schoolracetalk.org

Curtis Mayfield — “Mighty, Mighty (Spade and Whitey)” (click to listen or download)

I’ve highlighted Mica Pollock’s work on the importance of talking about race and other inequalities and ways to cultivate productive conversations here and here on AMPS. She has launched a new blog/site, www.schoolracetalk.org. I suggest you check it out. Here is her description:

I started schoolracetalk.org to create a virtual place where people can talk together about race issues in schools. We have to discuss these issues face to face with local people. But we also need places to go test ideas, and to learn some “gold nugget” ideas from others. We need to think together about how to handle racial inequality and what to “do with” difference and diversity.

Mica Pollock also had a very good guest post at eduwonkette recently.

I’ve said it before in a variety of ways, when those associated with our schools only indirectly address difficult matters of inequality, very little is gained. We might avoid or postpone some conflicts this way, but we don’t move forward toward better schools or a better society.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under Best Practices, Equity, Gimme Some Truth, National News, Take Action, Uncategorized

by | July 8, 2008 · 2:17 pm

No Greenbacks for Green Schools — Penny Wise and Pound Foolish

Click on the picture for a very cool interactive vesrion for the Wiscvonsin Department of Natural Resources.

Click on the image for a very cool interactive version from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resourses.

Ray Charles, Greenback Dollar (click to listen or download).

In many, many ways the Wisconsin school finance system is-in-and-of-itself penny wise and pound foolish. Beyond the general truths that a lack of investment in the education of our children weakens our future competitiveness, depresses the earning (and taxpaying) potential of the coming generations and lead to increases in social service and criminal justice spending (see the work of The Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education), our school finance system also precludes many districts from making the kind of investments that in the relatively short term will create great savings. Because of endless cycle of annual same service budget cuts created by the revenue limits, districts are rarely able to look even one or two years ahead for savings to be realized. Energy efficiency is a prime example of this.

Lt. Governor Babara Lawton has spearheaded an Energy Star School Challenge initiative (MMSD has accepted this challenge). This is good program, but there are no funds attached to participation and without funds even the program’s modest goal of a 10% increase in efficiency is beyond the means of many of our cash strapped school districts.

Some districts have taken matters in their own hands and have gone to the voters with referendums to fund energy efficiency investments. In April of 2007, the voters of the Rice Lake District approved $3.88 million for an upgrade of an 1980s era system. Superintendent Paul Vine said, “We use the savings to try to maintain and support other student educational programs.” A failed boiler at Waterloo High School led to school officials to investigate an upgrade. In February of 2008, voters in the Waterloo District approved $1.5 million to replace a 50 year-old boiler that was 60% efficient with a new 98% efficient system. As a news story noted:

Without voter approval to exceed the state-imposed revenue caps, the board would have had to cut educational programs to pay for a new boiler. Revenue caps limit the amount of money a school district can raise through the property tax levy. The project is nothing the district can do within its budget officials have said.

The Colby district is going forward with a similar referendum. The current system operates at 50% efficiency, the upgrade would be 95% efficient. The financial numbers are good, in the longer term:

A district-wide upgrade of heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems would cost about $841,000, but it would pay for itself in a little more than nine years and save the district over $92,000 annually, according to the study.

Like Waterloo, Colby can’t make the investment required to realize these saving without going to referendum. meanwhile, Colby struggles to with annual same service cuts like most other districts in Wisconsin. Two failed operating referenda in 2006 have already led to the closure of a school and an early learning center, and cuts to “classes like agriculture, foreign languages, business, consumer ed, music, and art” are now being contemplated (thanks to Terri Wiersma of the Marshfield News Herald for information and a local perspective).

The Colby referendum will also seek to  refinance existing debts at a lower the interest rate. High interest rate debts and obligations, particularly those associated retirement benefits, are a growing problem for many Wisconsin districts. the inability of districts to do the fiscally responsible thing by refinancing is yet another example of the “penny wise and pound foolish” choices our school finance system creates. I’ll probably be posting more on this in the future.

Efficient word burning, like that sought by Colby, is also more sustainable than fossil based fuel consumption. A study by the Biomass Energy Resource Center concluded that:

Biomass heating in schools holds great promise to advance renewable energy policy, stabilize and reduce school heating costs, benefit the local economy, support the forest products industry, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

So we can add global energy and greenhouse gas issues to the growing list of benefits that our state school finance system makes it difficult to realize. While I’m at it, I want to point out that the long bus rides caused by school closures, mergers, consolidations and dissolutions forced on districts by the state finance system aren’t helping the environment or energy consumption.

Currently about eleven districts on Wisconsin are using wood heat. There is a nice report on the Barron system here. Barron saves an estimated $100,000 a year via efficient wood heating and cooling. That’s money that is instead being used to educate students.

What a great idea, too bad our state finance system puts short term property tax cuts ahead of education.

Penny wise and pound foolish.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under "education finance", AMPS, Best Practices, Budget, education, Elections, finance, Local News, Referenda, referendum, School Finance, Uncategorized, We Are Not Alone

by | July 2, 2008 · 9:40 pm

WAES on the Radio

Tom Beebe of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools and John Smart of the Park Falls School Board, the Policies & Resolutions Committee of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards and the Board of Directors of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools. were on WORT‘s “In our Back Yard” today discussing the Wausaukee situation and the sad state of school funding in Wisconsin.

Click here to listen or download.

Support community-sponsored radio on WORT.

More on the possible Wausaukee School District dissolution here, here and here.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | July 2, 2008 · 7:47 am

Third Time a Charm? Another Wausaukee Referendum in the Works (Updated, Again)

You’d better hold on to what you’ve got
You’d better hold on to what you’ve got
Cause if you think nobody wants it
Just throw it away and you will see
Someone will have it before you can count 1, 2, 3
Yes they will, yes they will

Joe Tex, “Hold On to What You Got” (click to listen)

[Updates at the bottom. Update number 2 is a clarification from District Administrator Jan Dooley. Scroll down.]

WBAY is reporting that the Wausaukee Board of Education has instructed staff to draft another referendum. The Board will vote Thursday (July 3) to decide whether this will be placed before the electorate. The details are sketchy. WBAY reports that:

The school board decided Tuesday night on a $675,000 referendum. For the average $100,000 home, that’s an added $102 in property taxes for the next ten years.

An attorney will now draft the proposal for approval by the board on Thursday. It would then go before residents for a vote in 45 days.

If a third referendum fails, the Wausaukee School District is prepared to close. It’s nearly $200,000 in debt.

This sounds like a ten year nonrecurring referendum, but it is hard to tell. More on AMPS as the story develops.

A February four year nonrecurring referendum (at $1,250,000 the first year and $1,000,000 the subsequent years) failed by a vote of 1,334 to 394; on June 24 a one year nonrecurring $575,000 referendum failed by a vote of 563-544.

More on AMPS here and commentary from John Smart here.

Stay tuned.

Update #1

This video report from WLUK-TV gives more details, but adds to the confusion. According to the story, they are considering what sounds like a 2 1/2 year nonrecurring referendum. I’m not sure that is possible.

Keep checking back, I’ll post more as it becomes available.

Update #2

I received this very informative email from District Administrator Jan Dooley:

After receiving over 640 taxpayer signatures in support of another referendum, the board voted, at last night’s meeting (July 1), to authorize me to work with legal counsel to draft the resolutions for a third referendum. The referendum will be to exceed our revenue limit by $675,000 per year for ten years. The board will be voting on the resolutions at Thursday night’s meeting.

During the meeting last evening, our school board president, Dennis Taylor, indicated that the yearly school tax increase for this referendum amount on a $100,000 home would be approximately $102 per year. This amount is based on a zero percent increase in equalized value. If equalized value of property in the district increases, the actual impact for the referendum amount will be less per year.

Where the confusion may enter in is that Mr. Taylor indicated that in 2 ½ years our building debt will be paid off. Our current annual payment for our building debt is $675,000; thus, when our building is paid off, the school tax increase from the referendum will be offset by the decrease in school taxes from the pay off of the building debt. Thus, the increase from the referendum will be felt by taxpayers for the next three years, and then the school tax will revert to near existing levels. I trust that is the basis for the reporting of an increase of $102 per year for 2 ½ years on a $100,000 home.

With anticipated declining enrollment, our district will continue to realize a natural increase in our tax rate because of a drop in state aid.

As I have said before and will say again, “Educating our children should not be this difficult.” Our children deserve a solid education, and there should be sufficient revenue with which to provide such an education. A major problem that our district faces is our shrinking state aid. Since state aid is based on property wealth per student, and we are faced with high property values and declining enrollment, you understand the end result. Currently, our district is aided at 14.93%; thus, our taxpayers are already paying over 85% of our total revenue limit. This fact makes passing a referendum exceedingly difficult, at best. The sobering reality is that nearly 50% of our student population receives free and reduced lunches. Our district may be property rich, but many families are income poor.

So, we’re caught in a vice grip. Our state constitution guarantees a fair and equitable education for every child in the state. We have reduced our programming to a level where we believe any further cuts will greatly harm our children. We need additional revenue to provide this level of education for our children. Our taxpayers feel overtaxed with the state picking up only 14.93% of the cost. When our board of education reluctantly voted on June 26 to consider dissolving our school district, in the wake of our failed referendum on June 24, the board members were taking a stand for children.

Moving to this third referendum will not halt the dissolution process. The two processes will run parallel with one another. Since we do not know whether the referendum will pass in August, the board is scheduled to take action on ordering the dissolution of the school district on July 8. Should our referendum pass and our district receive additional money for operational costs, this factor will be weighed by the state in deciding the future of our district.

If you have any additional questions or need further clarification, please feel free to contact me at any time.

Jan Dooley, District Administrator

School District of Wausaukee

So it is a ten year nonrecurring referendum proposal, but the retirement of debt from a building project will lessen the apparent property tax impact after 2 1/2 years.

I wish Ms Dooley, all the staff, parents, students, Board and community members in Wausaukee the best. The most important way we can way to help them is to keep the pressure on the Governor and the Legislature.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under "education finance", AMPS, Best Practices, Budget, education, Elections, finance, Referenda, referendum, School Finance, Uncategorized, We Are Not Alone

by | July 1, 2008 · 9:39 am

The price of censorship

My daughter read this book in her middle school this past spring. I later watched the film with her, and while I was surprised by some of its rawness, it was a true story of transformative change of kids from an impoverished neighborhood who go on to attain college degrees. It was very inspirational.

The facts are these for this Indiana school. The book was in the library. The principal gave permission to use the book. Parents signed off on the book. The biggest problem going against this teacher was that the School Board appears to have had some 18 months of turmoil that started when a majority of board members ousted the School Superintendent. Sides were taken, tempers flared, and 10 folks ran for 3 spots on the School Board with the election just 2 months ago in May. The teacher decided to take her stand up against a new board & School Superintendent, who, perhaps, felt they had a mandate from the Perry Township citizens. Bad timing.

Robert Godfrey

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by | June 29, 2008 · 7:56 pm

Our schools are in danger, and some are just throwing stones

Joan Miro – “Personage Throwing a Stone at a Bird.” (1926)

Prince Buster, “Dont Throw Stones” (click to listen)

John Smart — of the Park Falls School Board, the Policies & Resolutions Committee of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards and the Board of Directors of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools — provides some more big picture context and good advice related to the vote by the Wausaukee School District to dissolve.

Our schools are in danger, and some are just throwing stones
by John Smart

It was just announced that the Wausaukee School Board has voted to dissolve their school district. They have had two failed referenda asking to allow them to exceed the state-imposed revenue caps, the last one losing by 19 votes, and the Board felt it had run out of options. Board President Dennis Taylor said, “The choice is not ours. The choice is the taxpayers of this community.”

If the dissolution goes through, the 500 or so students in the district will be distributed to surrounding schools in Wabeno, Marinette or maybe Crivitz or Pembine.

So many of our school districts are having financial problems that I should have thought that everyone would have some genuine understanding of the situation by now, but apparently that’s not so. There are still “experts” in the woods who think they have all the answers.

There have been 88 school referenda in Wisconsin so far this year in attempts to override the state’s unrealistic revenue caps, and exactly half of them failed, like Wausaukee’s. That means that school districts like Washburn, Rhinelander, Chetek, Durand, Hartford and so many others are in the process of making drastic cuts in curricular and co-curricular programs, thus depriving our next generation of the wherewithall to compete in the 21st Century global economic sweepstakes. Others may be contemplating the drastic measure that Wausaukee has taken.

It’s easy to level blame on the school boards and administrators for not doing their duty, but school boards are just local citizens who are willing to take on the job because it’s so important. It’s really everyone’s responsibility to study the issues and take part in the solutions. How many local citizens attend your district’s school board meetings? Ten or twenty? More? Less? Do you?

It’s also too easy to blame teachers and their unions. Our teachers are dedicated professionals who are working overtime to educate our kids. They’ve put themselves through a minimum of four years of higher education and must continue to take classes in order to maintain their licenses. Their compensation should be compared to other professionals, like doctors, dentists and lawyers, and in that company they’re hardly overpaid. Plus – I challenge anyone who thinks that teaching in 2008 is easy to spend a day in a classroom! I have.

Enrollments are declining in most of our districts. In Park Falls, we just graduated a class of 85, but our kindergarten class was 53, which doesn’t bode well for the future.

We’re trying to consolidate with the Glidden district in order to boost our combined numbers. Even though there are always snags in such attempts, we’re hoping that we can combine our strengths and build a great new school district.

But, considering declining enrollments and the failure of the state funding formula, consolidations are far from the ultimate answer, as those of us in the trenches know only too well.

The state school funding formula is based on student numbers, so that is not working in our favor, and will continue to get worse unless major reforms are instituted.

State aids are also based on equalized property evaluations, and ours in the Park Falls School District have risen, from $303,606,538 in 1997-8 to $648,752,692 in 2007-8, thanks in large part to expensive “cottages” built on our beautiful lakes and rivers by seasonal visitors and retirees. To the state formula, which is based on property values rather than income, this makes it look like we’re more than twice as wealthy as we were ten years ago, and consequently our school aids have been reduced.

In Park Falls, we received $3,923,263 from the state ten years ago and $2,578,690 this past school year. Our enrollment may have dropped, but the expenses of running a school haven’t dropped! Everything from teachers’ salaries to energy costs have gone up, and the difference must, of necessity, be raised from local property taxpayers. In Park Falls, our tax levy has risen from $1,820,324 ten years ago to $3,844,298 this past school year.

The current state school funding formula was passed as a temporary, stop-gap measure in 1993, but is still in place. It sets the QEO, a limit to the compensation teachers can be given, and the revenue cap, a limit to how much the school districts can levy from property taxes. But it left a gap between the two that assured a fiscal nightmare, which is now upon us. It should also be pointed out that teachers are the only public employees who are limited by law in raises to their compensation packages, and school districts are the only municipal governmental units limited by caps in tax levies.

The legislature has been incapable of dealing with this issue. The “No New Taxes” people in the Assembly are determined to hold firm, resisting the clear need for sales tax and corporate tax reforms, which would put more revenue into the general fund and allow more adequate school aids.

There are good plans for school funding reform on drawing boards all over the state [and nation], and they are all hinged to the realization that there is nothing a society does that is more important than educating its young. The Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools has some terrific ideas [www.excellentschools.org] – please check them out.

There is an election in November, and with it the opportunity to change the do-nothing legislature. Please make sure that your candidates understand how critical the school funding issue is, and vote accordingly.

The future demands nothing less. Please let’s make Wausaukee the last school closing in Wisconsin.

More on Park Falls, here.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under "education finance", Accountability, AMPS, Best Practices, Budget, education, Elections, finance, Referenda, referendum, School Finance, Take Action, We Are Not Alone

by | June 23, 2008 · 3:21 pm

George Carlin on NCLB, Education and More

Warning, expletives not deleted (it would have been wrong to delete the expletives of the man responsible for bringing the “Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say on Television” all the way to the Supreme Court).

Don’t rest in peace George; keep stirring up trouble wherever you are.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under Best Practices, Gimme Some Truth, National News, nclb, No Child Left Behind, Quote of the Day

by | June 21, 2008 · 1:45 pm

“Ain’t No Miracle Worker”

The Brogues, “I Ain’t No Miracle Worker” (click to listen).

There is a lot of excitement about Dan Nerad taking the reins as Superintendent of MMSD. I share this excitement. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him three or four times, have read numerous articles about him and his work, have talked to people who know him from Green Bay and have researched what he has accomplished in his career. All this leads me to believe that Dan Nerad is a very high quality district leader who will fit well in Madison and contribute greatly to the improvement of our schools.

Still. I worry that expectations are unreasonably high and that we may be setting Nerad and ourselves up for a fall. Over and over again I have heard and read people saying “when Dan Nerad gets here” either preceded or followed by some hope or promise of a positive change. There will be changes and I think that (from my perspective) they will be mostly positive. So what’s the problem? Here is a list:

  • It doesn’t recognize all the good work of the recent past. Not Just Art Rainwater’s contributions, but the contributions of our Board members, our staff and teachers and our community. Looking to Nerad to for huge improvements can make it seem like MMSD has been stagnant or failing. It hasn’t. For some nice overviews and reflections on Art Rainwater and his time with MMSD, see the current MMSD Today.
  • We shouldn’t forget that educational improvement is incremental. Perhaps the best history of educational reform is David Tyack and Larry Cuban’s Tinkering Toward Utopia. In their prologue they write:

Although policy talk about reform has had a utopian ring, actual reforms have typically been gradual and incremental — tinkering with the system. It may be fashionable to decry such change as piecemeal and inadequate, but over long periods of time such revisions of practices adapted to local contexts can substantially improve schools. Rather than seeing the hybridizing of reform ideas as a fault, we suggest it can be a virtue. Tinkering is one way of preserving what is valuable and reworking what is not.

The point in the last sentence is related to my concerns about belittling what has been accomplished in our schools. Tyack develops this further in one of my favorite essays “A Conservationist Ethic in Education Reform.”

  • No policy, reform, set of policies or reforms will make everyone happy. Uncontested school board races and an apparent conflict and controversy avoidance strategy by the Board of Education may have lulled some into thinking that divisions are a thing of the past in Madison school politics. They aren’t. I recognize that most people involved share many values and even have much agreement about how best to put those values into action, but also know from personal experience that there are passionate disagreements among people of good will when it comes to education. Whatever Dan Nerad does or does not do, tries or does not try, some vocal segments of our community will object that it is too much or too little or just plain wrong. The divisions that have been hidden will become apparent again at some point. I believe that Dan Nerad is skilled at working toward consensus, finding common ground and building coalitions. This will serve him (and our community) well, but it won’t satisfy everyone.
  • The challenges Madison’s schools face are great, too great for any individual to address alone. The issues raised by demographic changes are well documented; the insane choices created by the state school finance system are well known; the pressures from testing and other ill-devised mandates of NCLB are readily apparent. I don’t believe these are intractable, but I do recognize that there are no simple answers and that sustained hard work and cooperation from all associated with the district and all segments of our community are necessary if we are to be successful in meeting these challenges. Dan Nerad cannot do this without help from many quarters. Much has been written about his openness, outreach and cooperative spirit, but if some members of the Board of Education continue to be blasé about or dismissive of public engagement, little improvement is possible. The community has to step up too. Schools of Hope (as well as other Urban League programs) and the Foundation for Madison Public Schools are great; Mayor Cieslewicz, Alder Satya Rhodes-Conway and others are actively working to expand school/city/community initiatives; MMSD has wide-ranging partnerships with the University of Wisconsin School of Education and other local research and higher education institutions; PTOs, PTAs and PTGs are doing wonderful things; Thousands of volunteers help our schools on a regular basis; Our legislative delegation — especially Rep. Sondy Pope Roberts — are leaders in the fight for school finance reform; ABC Madison and Get TUFF have been educating and agitating for state school funding changes; Communities and Schools Together and Mad-City Grumps are preparing for the next referendum campaign; countless other individuals and groups are contributing to the betterment of our schools… (apologies if I left out your favorite). An impressive list, but it isn’t enough. We all can and must do more.

So let’s work together to welcome Dan Nerad, expand the good our schools are doing, fix the state finance system, pass a referendum…have realistic expectations about what a change in the superintendency will bring and do our best to help Dan Nerad exceed those expectations.

In this spirit (or maybe just because I like it), here is video from the last referendum campaign.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under "education finance", AMPS, Best Practices, Budget, education, finance, Local News, nclb, No Child Left Behind, Pope-Roberts/Breske Resolution, Referenda, referendum, School Finance, Take Action, Uncategorized