Now that the Appleton Area School District has committed to going to a referendum to ask the taxpayers for more funding, I thought I would recap the key meetings that lead up to that decision. The AASD Board of Education had their discussion at the 09/30/2021 Board of Education meeting regarding the proposed referendum cut short due to time constraints so they decided to take it up again during their 10/11/2021 work session. This gave them the opportunity to review the information presented at the previous meeting, discuss it in more detail, and decide whether they wanted to pursue an April 2022 referendum date or wait until November of 2022 or April of 2023.
[The couple things that stood out to me were that it was, again, stressed that if a referendum is not passed, taxes will go down by around $100 per $100,000 worth of property and they seemed worried that it would then be very difficult to get the community to vote to approve a referendum in the future.
Additionally, by law, school districts can ask no more than 2 referendum questions during any given election, so they can’t split the capital project question into separate items. The vote will be all or nothing.]
AASD Chief Financial Officer Greg Hartjes briefly reviewed the PowerPoint presentation from the previous meeting.
The referendum would have two questions. The first would be $98 million in funding for four capital projects. The second would be for an ongoing $1.6 million in annual funding to clean, maintain, provide utilities, and provide staffing for moving 6th graders to the middle schools and staffing a new elementary school.
He reminded the Board that construction costs have increased over the last 2 years since planning was first done for a potential referendum.
They wanted to reduce class sizes for kindergarten through 3rd grade [Note: at a later meeting that was changed to grades Kindergarten through 2nd] from 25:1 to 20:1 or less. This would require them to add 36 new teachers at an annual cost of just over $3 million. He said this would add $30 in taxes on a property valued at $100,000.
They also wanted to add additional staffing for STEM areas. Greg explained that although he used the term “STEM” it wouldn’t necessarily only involve science, technology, engineering, and math. He referenced “innovation spaces” and problem solving. The cost of having a STEM paraprofessional at each of the 4 middle schools would be $170,000 a year.
They also wanted to have STEM teachers at the elementary level who would be specialists like art, music, and physical education teachers.
These were estimated to add $12 in taxes per $100k in property value.
The 3 operational pieces together added up to about $6 million combined. [I may be missing something, but it wasn’t clear to me how the operational pieces added up to $6 million but the referendum question was only for $1.6 million.]
If both the capital question and the operating question passed, taxes on $100,000 worth of property would increase by $30-$40. Greg stated that was generally considered a reasonable number. The 2014 referendum raised taxes by $79 per $100,000, and the 2005 referendum raised them by $99.
He reviewed the levy information for the previous year. AASD has pre-paid debt from the 2014 referendum which has resulted in significant savings. Per Greg, “what we are able to do is we’re able to take the $9 million that we paid last year–this year it’ll be about $9 million, maybe 10, maybe down to 8, we’ll find that out in the next 3 weeks–but that $9 million that we’re paying off debt, when we pay off in 2023 the remainder of our 2014 referendum debt, going forward we will be able to take that debt payment and move it toward new debt. And by doing that we won’t see a significant drop and then a significant increase to the tax rate if we were to go to referendum in 3 years or 4 years of 5 years. So, again, why were are in such a good position is because we’ve…pre-paid our debt for the last 4 years. We will again this year–it’s our 5th year of doing that–which means we’re paying off debt so we can put our payment towards future debt.”
He then reviewed the timeframe for going to referendum. Most districts do not go with the primary elections, so they would be looking at either the April 2022 general election, the November 2022 general election, or the April 2023 general election.
He stated that after those elections the window would close in terms of using the $9 million in defeasance money to go toward new debt. “So if we don’t pass a referendum the next year our tax levy’s going to go down by more than a dollar–very difficult to get voters…in 5 years or 4 years to say ‘we’ll pay that original dollar plus whatever else the expense is going to be going forward.’ So we find ourselves in a really good position here in the next two years.”
He reviewed the timelines for the different referendum dates and then opened things up for questions and feedback from board members.
Board member Jim Bowman was in favor of an April 2022 referendum because he thought there wouldn’t be a lot of competition for the attention of residents. “There’s not a lot on the spring ballot that’s going to demand partisans come out. There’s no state supreme court judges for example, so it’s gonna be mostly local races, school board races, the legislature of course, but you always got that. But there’s nothing there that would cause partisan fights. Compare that with next fall in which the two political parties are gonna do battle. They’re gonna do it over the US senator and over the governor particularly, and those are gonna–both those offices are very important to the parties and they are gonna fight hard. So for us to try to get the attention of our constituents in August and September and October is gonna be very difficult. I think we’ll be drowned out by the heavy political arguments. So, my recommendation is we have a much better chance of having a honest conversation on this this coming April.”
Board member Amanda Stuck preferred the November election because “if you really want the majority of people to be able to have a say, majority of voters that get out and vote, that the fall elections are when people actually come out and vote, and so I think that is the best chance to get the most say and the most feedback from the community when you have the most voters turning out.”
Board President Kay Eggert wanted to review some of the recommendations some more, particularly regarding reducing class sizes and increasing STEM staffing.
Board member Deb Truyman also felt like a lot of this information was new and wanted to look over it some more.
Board member Kris Sauter said she would appreciate additional community input and to possibly have the Future Needs Committee relook at this since it had been 2 years since the committee came up with their original recommendations. She said, “I just think much has changed in people’s lives and I would not want to go to referendum if we didn’t share, or have a good sense of what our community is feeling right now about all of these areas.”
Board member Ed Ruffolo was concerned that there was a lot of upward pressure on the cost of construction materials and labor which was only going to accelerate,, perhaps dramatically, over the next couple years. What would indicate that if we’re going to build we should do that sooner rather than later. What are you really seeing in those trends?
Jody Andres, a consultant from Hoffman Planning, Design & Construction answered that they had already missed the boat on that one a little bit. The costs in the presentation had been projected for 2020, and they had already seen a 9% increase. If they were to project out to next November, even in a typical year, he would expect costs to increase by an additional 3-4% which would result in an overall increase of 13% to what these projects would have cost pre-pandemic.
Board member James Bacon, speaking as a newer board member, wanted some clarity on which of the referendum recommendations explicitly came out of prior Future Needs Advisory Committee discussions and which did not.
Greg answered that the outcomes listed on the slide were essentially the outcome of the committee. He then further explained, “We didn’t ask the committee to give specific details. We asked them in concept and so in concept they were supportive of building a new elementary school, they were in support of moving 6th grade to the middle school.” They had asked the committee to rank various ideas, but they didn’t come out with any definitive answers because they wanted that to be for Board of Education discussion. He did note that “it was really important to the committee that we think of equity, that we consider every student in the district and their needs from a facility standpoint, and that meant making improvements to every one of our facilities.” That is where the idea came from to move 6th grade to the middle school, create and renovate space at the elementary level, and make additions at the high school level.
The committee put forth those areas for focus and handed them off to the leadership team and Board of Education which solidified some of the details.
They talked a little about the proposed STEM spaces and additional staff.
Deb Truyman wanted to know if all of those would be under one referendum. Was it all or nothing?
Greg responded, “You can only have two questions on an election ballot.” That is why they would have one question for the capital projects and one question for the ongoing operating costs. The fact that it was all or nothing was why they really wanted to have a good sense of what the community felt regarding the different pieces.
Ed wanted to know what Jody’s experience had been regarding the success of Spring vs Fall referendums.
Jody said that, statistically speaking, the Presidential election is when school referendums are most successful due to the number of people voting. That would be followed by any November election which would be ahead of a spring election.
Amanda wanted to know, regarding freeing up space by moving 6th graders out of elementary schools, did they have data to project that the elementary population would continue to grow enough to need another elementary school.
Greg said that when the committee originally began, 11 of their 16 elementary schools were overcapacity. With the changes in enrollment over the last two years, some of those schools are no longer over capacity, but they were and continue to be significantly overcapacity at Huntley Elementary. The northeast part of town has the highest growth currently happening as well as the greatest growth potential for the future. and that’s the highest potential for growth. “We do think that we have to talk about some other schools and kind of right sizing the district.” He mentioned that Columbus Elementary only has 105 students this year. He said it wasn’t about total enrollment but about the changing needs of the students and where the enrollments were going within the district. A majority of their growth is north of 41, but they don’t have an elementary or middle school there.
Superintendent Baseman told the Board that the other issue regarding the elementary schools was that they have a lot of programs that are meeting in hallways and meeting spaces that were never meant to be instructional spaces. She mentioned special education, reading specialists, and interventions as the areas in which this was particularly happening.
Jim Bowman asked, “How important is the [community] survey? I mean, we want community input, and we want to get a sense of the community. How important is the survey in your thinking?”
Greg answered, “we have not ever done a survey in our previous referendums. We’ve done more focus groups and we’ve gone out and spoke at each of our schools, gathered input. We haven’t done a survey. That is what we had intended to do, coming out of spring of 2020.” He asked Jody how many school districts he worked with did surveys.
Jody answered that 75-80% of the districts they worked with did the surveys. “The feedback is extremely valuable, and it really helps boards make decisions a lot easier.”
Per Greg, prior to the pandemic, they had been within a week of mailing out the survey, so they had the draft which would need only minor updates in order to be sent our now.
Superintendent Baseman mentioned the possibility of moving forward with a partial referendum on April and then asking other referendum questions at a later election.
Overall, the Board seemed to feel that an April 2022 referendum date would be rushing things.
Deb mentioned that they had other things currently on the docket. She also noted, “There’s still some dissatisfaction out in the community, and I think giving it a little time would let things settle out a little bit.”
They finished up the meeting by going around the table and asking the individuals board members to give their thoughts.
Kay thought they did still need to consider a referendum because they do have needs. She would prefer a November date. She also wanted to understand a little bit more about the operational needs/plans that had been brought forward.
For the sake of speed, James Bacon echoed what Kay said.
Amanda agreed it would be good to take some time to go through things. She also advocated for a November time frame.
Jim Bowman was uncomfortable with a November date but he did think they needed time to look at this.
Deb Truyman thought November would be the best.
Kris Sauter also preferred a date of November 2022 or April of 2023.
Ed Ruffolo thought this was a good plan and that they should certainly move forward with talking to the community about it. He didn’t want to wait until April of 2023 because costs were just going to continue accelerating and they were going to end up being able to do a lot less or having to raise a lot more. He was conflicted between the April 2022 or November 2022 dates, but based on what Jody said it sounded like they might have a higher degree of success in November. He thought April 2022 would be a little too rushed and they ran the risk that the community wouldn’t be ready to vote for it at that point.
View full meeting details here: http://go.boarddocs.com/wi/aasd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C7JJRQ4DD22F
View full meeting video here: https://youtu.be/uzQrmiNi3r8
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