Deeply indebted Wausaukee school district begins dissolution process

[TheMightyFavog]

http://www.wbay.com/global/story.asp?s=8563170

The Wausaukee School District is moving ahead on a plan to dissolve by July of 2009.

It comes after two failed referendums. The most recent this past Tuesday where 1107 votes were cast. 544 people voted to approve more money for the district. But 563 voted no, a difference of only 19 votes.

(snip)

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."

(snip)

If the Wausaukee School District dissolves, it's students would attend one of five neighboring school districts: Crivitz, Pembine, Marinette, Wabeno, or Goodman - Armstrong Creek.


This is sad. Wausaukee may have been our rivals in the M&O Confrence when I was in High School, but it would be a great tragedy to see this school close, even if we did give them shit because their school building resembled a bunker.

To get a better idea of the kind of distances the kids would be travelling to get to school if Wausaukee dissolves, here's a map that gives you a rough idea of how the school districts are laid out in Marinette County.

http://www.baylakerpc.org/MARINETTE/CountyPlan/Maps/Map_9_4_School_Districts.pdf

As you can see, going by area, the Wausaukee School district is the largest in the entire county, meaning that the neighboring school districts are going to have to pick up a hefty tab for busing these kids to school considering what diesel's going for these days. Heck, the trip for some of those who would be going to Marinette would be over 20 miles!

This is beyond sad.

[tjmertz]

1. Much more here

http://madisonamps.org/2008/06/27/wausaukee-school-district-votes-to-dissolve/

(excerpt)

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.

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...

[Connonym]

2. Hellz, the high school I went to was a long-distance phone call away

I lived literally on the street that divided Big Bend from Muskego and I went to middle school and high school all the way out in Mukwonago. My brother once calculated that there were at least 20 high schools that were closer to our home. I was at the bus stop at about 6 am. The morning ride wasn't so bad as we were the last ones picked up but the ride home took forever because we were also the last ones off.

I can tell you that it's going to be rough on those kids to be bussed so far. Hard to make friendships with other kids (yes bitter experience here saying that in 1980 when your friends all lived a long-distance phone call away you didn't get to talk on the phone much nor hang out much) when many of the other students will live very far away. Hard to participate in after-school activities. Just hard altogether. And for the younger kids it will be especially difficult to spend so much time on a bus -- not to mention that the longer bus rides, especially in a Wisconsin winter, put the kids at a much higher risk of being involved in a bus accident.

It's very, very sad. It's a bad sign for times to come when schools start closing down. I'm paranoid about the state of the US so that must be kept in mind but it makes me fear the start of the prole class. Public education for all is what made the American middle class possible. The tin hat person living inside my brain thinks that there are probably evil Cheney types cackling over the possibility of no longer having to outsource cheap labor and relishing the notion of a new generation of uneducated cannon fodder. Damn, I woke up on the paranoid side of the bed today.

[RevCheesehead]

3. Just wait - the young families will leave Wausaukee, too.

This whole situation is penny-wise, pound foolish. I live in one of those short-sighted "cities," and recognize the symptoms. So far, our school system is intact, but it's also wounded.

[HelenWheels]

4. Spending caps and the QEO are having their desired effect

the main reason they were implemented was to destroy public education and it's working.

Of course I agree spending should be controlled but something needed to be in place to keep up with inflation.

[sybylla]

5. There will be many more to come

unless we change the way we finance schools.

Schools can't just raise taxes to pay for their needs. Costs rise higher than the revenue cap increases. Referendums fail. Sooner or later, large numbers of school districts in this state will be in serious financial trouble. Dissolution or combining with neighboring schools will become the only solution.

The children will suffer for it. Taxpayers will lose local control over their children's education. It will cost the taxpayers more to bus these kids to another school than maintain a local school. But their greedy (anti-referendum) backsides won't find that out until a year or two after they've dissolved and it's too late.

I know. Loads of doom and gloom there. But school boards have been predicting this since the revenue cap (2% increase per year) and QEO (3.8%) went into effect. Eventually, costs exceed revenue. The community either agrees to support the school or it fails financially.

[Dinger]

6. Excellent And Concise sybylla

K & R