Category Archives: referendum

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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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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by | June 27, 2008 · 8:25 pm

Wausaukee School District Votes to Dissolve

19 votes.

That was the margin by which the June 24, 2008 non-recurring, one year $575,000 school operating referendum lost in Wausaukee. 19 votes out of 1107 cast (number from the DPI site, the linked Peshtigo Times story appears to be wrong). Now according to the Eagle-Herald, the Wausaukee Board of Education feels that the best thing to do is to dissolve the district.

[In a story from WBAY (Green Bay)] School Board President Dennis Taylor says, “the choice is not ours. The choice is the taxpayers of this community. The community has to decide if they’re willing to spend an extra $180, in some cases $150 a year to keep a school open in this community.”

Blaming those who voted against a referendum, although accurate because they are the proximate cause, misses the bigger picture, the role of the state school finance system.

District Administrator Jan Dooley provided some of this:

She feels hopes for a state “bail out” are in vain. She said there are many districts in almost the same financial position as Wausaukee, and if the state lets one it will have to help them all. “I don’t see the state intervening by offering assistance to Wausaukee over and above what is offered ot all districts in the state, because then the floodgates would open. The only chance would be a change in the state aid formula.”

“We have cut, and we have cut to a level that we feel we cannot risk cutting more staffing without losing kids,” Dooley declared. “I think everyone in the district should be asking, ‘What do we want for the children of our district, and what do we need to do to bring that about?’ Our children don’t deserve to have more programs cut on them,” she declared. “This is about children and their futures! I am an educator at the core of my being and this resonates deep within me. Right now it’s the children that are at the forefront in my mind.”

She said Wausaukee is at a point where “We’re caught in what I call the death spiral. We have established what we believe is a sound education for our children. If we cut more, parents will say I want more, so they will take their children and put them into another district. If we cut more, we risk losing more students, which means we lose more aids, and have to cut still more programs. it’s a downward spiral that won’t end.”

“The children in the School District of Wausaukee deserve an education that is no less than any other children in the state,” she declared.

The failure of a referendum in February inspired a thorough discussion of the roll of state finance system in this sad turn of events. After that vote, people on both sides of the issue looked to our elected state officials for change.

[Gerry] Gerbers described the proposed referendum as, “Ill designed and ill conceived,” in that it offered no long-term solutions…

Gerbers cited figures showing that the district is property rich and income poor. Wausaukee School District residents have family and individual incomes below the state average. More than 10 percent of the population is at or below the poverty level. He and Kipp said residents cannot afford more tax increases.

Village President Clark Caine argued that the state kicks in and pays property taxes for poor households under the Homestead property Tax Relief law, “so that is really not an issue.” [Editor’s Note: In theory this is correct, but the Homestead Credit formula has not been adjusted for inflation, so many people who should qualify, don’t. — TJM}

Gerbers reviewed a bit of the state aid formula. Wausaukee, because of huge amounts of recreational properties which are rapidly rising in value, gets only 14.93 percent of its expenses reimbursed by the state. Peshtigo gets five times more aid per student than Wausaukee.

Gerbers is calling attention to the problems of the many high property value, high cost, low income districts in the state. These are described further in the Atlas of School Finance from the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future. Some believe that the current “Sparsity Aid” — ironically featured on the front page of the DPI website today (snap shot, here) — sufficiently addresses the needs of the districts. It doesn’t. Gerbers is right about this, but he was wrong to oppose the referendum because it isn’t a long term solution. referendum supporters had the right idea:

Ann Hartnell asked why not call for approval of this referendum, and use that approval anyway to buy time for the changes they plan to propose. She said the school board would not be obligated to levy the full amount authorized by the referendum.

Caine also urged approving the referendum, then pushing for change….

Trustee Hilbert Radtke said people in Madison and Milwaukee do not realize the difficulties faced by rural districts under existing funding formulas, and we don’t have enough votes here to change it.

A suggestion from the floor was to enlist the help of non-resident property owners, since they also pay taxes in the district. Get them to contact their legislators from parts of the state where there are enough votes.

Hartnell agreed, but said even a concerted campaign from all of Marinette County might make a huge difference.

I hope that despite the disappointment these plans go forward and that this situation catches the attention of the Governor and the Legislature.

What next for Wausaukee? Some people are already working for yet another referendum.

Resident Gerald Schimidt says, “the community has the potential to basically shrivel up, die, go away. We don’t want to see that.”

John May says, “it will be a shame for a small community like this to lose a big school like that.” His son Cody goes to school here, but the way things are going he may not be for much longer.

The school is now considering shutting down. It’s nearly $200,000 in debt and the board says it can’t cut costs anymore.

School board member Dave Kipp says, “the level of frustration is very high. We have done everything we can to cut costs to the bone without sacrificing a quality education for our kids. That’s the key point.”

The only way to potentially save the school is for taxpayers to step up. Which is exactly what John Guarisco is doing at this barbeque, collecting signatures to ask the school board for yet another referendum and another chance for taxpayers to save their school district.

Meanwhile the planning for a July 2009 closure has begun. If this happens, the students will be disbursed to five neighboring school districts — Crivitz, Pembine, Marinette, Wabeno, or Goodman-Armstrong Creek — all of which face similar difficulties under our state school finance system, a system designed not to educate, but to keep property taxes low and politics safe.

Please join the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools and others in working to enact a way of funding schools that puts education first. Please contact your Legislators and Governor Doyle and tell them this has gone on too long.

Thomas J. Mertz

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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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