Are you ready to vote on this on November 4th? Thanks to Beth Moss for passing this information along and please contact her if you’d like someone to come talk to your group.
On Nov 4 we will not only be electing a new president and vice-president, but we will also be voting on a referendum to help our schools continue to provide the high quality education and services that our families and community expect. If passed, the referendum will give relief to the district from the state imposed revenue cap, which forces the Board of Education to make cuts in programs, staff, and services each year. Our community needs your help to get the word out that this referendum is vitally important to our schools and our children. Community and Schools Together is taking literature door to door to let people know that at the bottom of their ballot, there is a referendum question, and to please vote Yes! CAST needs volunteers to take literature and place it under a door mat or in a door handle so that we can educate our neighbors. If you can help, please reply to me, and I’ll give you more information.
Referendum information
(for more complete info, please go to www.madison.k12.wi.us/ and click on Referendum or www.madcitygrumps )
This referendum is more complicated than usual because the Board has enacted several tax mitigating measures to provide relief to property owners.
The Superintendent is framing the request as a partnership with the community. The budget gap for 2009-10 is $8.2 million. The Board is asking the community for $5 million. The remaining $3 million will be made up by using $2 million from the leftover fund balance (will not affect the district’s bond rating), $600,000 from unallocated elementary positions (will not affect staffing levels), and $400,000 from efficiencies yet to be determined.
For the following year the request is for $4 million; the actual gap is predicted to be $6 million, but the BOE has voted to implement a Capital Expansion Fund (Fund 41) to pay for maintenance projects. All maintenance funds will be put into the fund, and the district will be able to spread out the use of that money over several years. The other advantage of this fund is that it allows the district to pay less money in negative aid back to the state, thus lowering the school tax levy. Negative aid is the money that property rich districts such as Madison pay to the state to subsidize districts with less property wealth and less ability to raise money. The Board has also voted to move $2 million from the fund 80 fund balance, which will also lower the tax levy for 1 year only. Thus, these 2 tax mitigating actions will actually lower the tax levy rate for a Madison homeowner. Home owners in Madison are already paying less in school tax than they were in 1997.
– What does recurring mean, and why is it needed?
The referendum is for 3 years, and it is recurring. That means the Board is asking for $5 million, $4 million, and $4 million, and in subsequent years the base of $13 million will not increase. If the district does not continue to receive the resources after 3 years, then it will face a $17 million shortfall and will have to make devastating cuts to programs. If given the jurisdiction to raise the tax levy for 3 years and then hold steady after that, MMSD will be in a much stronger position financially until state finance reform occurs. Even when that does happen, Madison will not be positively affected for some time. If it does not happen in the near future, the BOE will still be forced to make cuts but they will not be as deep. The Board is trying to look forward to improving the schools, and must have the resources and the promise of resources to do so. If the community wants a 4 year old kindergarten program, MMSD must have the resources to plan ahead and not just continue to cut programs year after year. If the community wants to redesign our high schools to address the needs of our ever changing student population, and send the students out to be productive global citizens, the schools need the resources. We are beyond the point of not affecting kids and of not affecting programs with the annual cuts.
