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Commentary on Madison Schools’ Quietly spending taxpayer’s $4M
The plan didn’t become publicly available until Friday afternoon, when the meeting agenda was posted online.
Does the analysis include space in other facilities? The District expanded some of its least diverse schools (Van Hise and Hamilton) several years ago, when space was available in other nearby schools.
The Madison school district is planning a substantial tax and spending increase referendum in 2020.
Perhaps these funds might support those requirements.
Madison taxpayers spend far more than most K-12 school districts, yetwe have long tolerated disastrous reading results
Beware Warren’s ‘Madisonian’ Plan for Public Education
Of the Wisconsin school districts with an achievement gap, Madison’s is one of the worst. According to 2018-19 Forward Exam scores, only 34.9% of Madison students are proficient in English, well below the statewide average of 40.9%. But in Madison only 10% of African-American students are proficient in English, compared with 57.2% of white students. Only 79% of African-American students graduate from Madison public high schools within five years, compared with 94% of white students.
Those who graduate aren’t necessarily better off. Parents say there is no accountability when the district graduates students it has failed to educate. “Yes our black kids are being left behind,” says Jewel Adams, whose son graduated from La Follette High School in 2016. “They are getting passed along without the knowledge they need to be passed along with.”
The racial disparity in Madison extends to school safety. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty recently examined emergency calls to 911 originating from Madison public schools and found that black students are more likely than whites to attend dangerous schools. Brandon Alvarez graduated in 2018 from La Follette, where there was one 911 call per seven students from August 2012 to May 2019. His sister started high school this year and he advised his parents to take advantage of Wisconsin’s open-enrollment program and send her to school in another district. “I told my dad it wouldn’t be a good idea for my sister to go to La Follette,” says Mr. Alvarez. “She should go to a district that focuses more on academics and is safer.” Mr. Alvarez drives his sister to high school each day in neighboring Monona Grove.
Despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
The School District Administration is planning a substantial tax and spending increase referendum for the fall, 2020 election.
Transparency in Madison’s $500M+ Taxpayer Supported K-12 School District: Open Records Suppression edition
An anonymous Madison School District resident is suing the district over its refusal to provide records in response to 26 requests made over a three-and-a-half month period earlier this year.
The John Doe is being represented by attorney Tom Kamenick, the president and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project. The lawsuit filed Nov. 14 in Dane County Circuit Court asks the court to mandate the release of the records and award Doe at least $100 for each of the 48 counts it alleges against the district in addition to attorney fees.
According to the lawsuit, between July 10 and Oct. 31 Doe filed requests seeking documents related to administration’s weekly updates with board members, curriculum plans, school improvement plans and the annual seclusion and restraint report, among other topics.
Despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
The School District Administration is planning a substantial tax and spending increase referendum for the fall, 2020 election.
The records requested between July and October have included such things as the “weekly update” document provided by the district to School Board members; School Improvement Plans for the 2019-20 school year; the district’s K-12 sequential curriculum plan; the “Inequitable Distribution of Teachers Report,” all reports regarding notification and reporting following use of seclusion or physical restraint; annual licensure certifications; among other documents.
Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said the state open records law clearly states that no request can be denied because of anonymity, and that the district’s denials “are clearly illegal.”
“It may be that the district is relying on a case decided a few years back in which a court agreed that a custodian could deny a request from a known harasser,” Lueders said. But that does not give MSD the right to reject anonymous requests.”
He said the district should admit it was wrong and settle the lawsuit, “otherwise taxpayers will be on the hook for legal costs that should never have been incurred.”
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Government Tax, spending and borrowing practices.
Alexandra Stevenson and Cao Li
Local governments borrowed for years to create jobs and keep factories humming. Now China’s economy is slowing to its weakest pace in nearly three decades, but Beijing has kept the lending spigots tight to quell its debt problems.
In response, a growing number of Chinese cities are raising money using hospitals, schools and other institutions. Often they use complicated financial arrangements, like lease agreements or trusts, that stay a step ahead of regulators in Beijing.
“Whether it is a financial lease or trust, they are just all tools for local governments to borrow,” said Chen Zhiwu, director of the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong. “Officials stop one today, and they come up with another tool tomorrow.”
“That’s why China has been talking about curbing local government debts for many years and it’s still not solved,” Mr. Chen said.
Increasingly these deals are going sour, as they did in Ruzhou, and the loans are going unpaid. Lenders have accused three of Ruzhou’s hospitals and three investment funds tied to the city of not paying back their debts.
Madison, which has long spent far more than most taxpayer supported K – 12 school districts is planning a large referendum for 2020.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Property Tax Assistance
City property taxes for their home are about $5,000 a year. “That’s a whole chunk of our total income, because our only income is Social Security,” he says.
But then they discovered a little-known city program for people in their situation. The “property tax assistance for seniors reverse mortgage loan program” allows seniors to defer paying their property taxes.
Property owners are eligible if they are 65 or older with less than $30,000 in assets and meet income guidelines (currently $52,850 for a single person or $60,400 for two people). When people qualify, a lien is placed on the property, meaning the property taxes will be paid when the owner sells the property or dies and their estate is settled.
The city charges an annual interest rate for the loan — depending on borrowing costs, between 2.5 and 6.5 percent.
Madison’s taxpayer supported school district is planning a substantial referendum for 2020.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: The Millennial Urban Lifestyle Is About to Get More Expensive
T The idea that companies like Uber and WeWork and DoorDash don’t make a profit might come as a shock to the many people who spend a fair amount of their take-home pay each month on ride-hailing, shared office space, or meal delivery.
There is a simple explanation for why they’re not making money. The answer, for finance people, has to do with something called “unit economics.” Normal people should think of it like this: Am I getting ripped off by these companies, or am I kinda-sorta ripping them off? In many cases, the answer is the latter.
Let’s say you buy a subscription to a meal-kit company, which sends you fresh ingredients and recipes to cook at home. You pay $100 a month. The ingredients are tasty, so you renew for the second month. And the third. But by the fourth month, you’ve decided that you’ve learned enough basic tricks around the kitchen to handle roasted chicken or sautéed cod by yourself. You cancel the subscription.Your lifetime value to this company is $400—or $100 for four months. Since you quit, the meal-kit company has to find the next “you” to keep growing. So they advertise on podcasts. Let’s say that, on average, this company can expect to add 100 new users if it spends $50,000 on podcast advertising—or $500 per new user.
If the company spends millions on podcast ads, its user base and revenue base will grow and grow. Outside analysts will gasp and marvel: This meal-kit thing is on fire! But look closer: If it costs $500 to add a new user, and the typical marginal user—like you—only spends $400 on meal kits, there is no path to profitability. The road leads to the red.
Madison’s $500M taxpayer supported school district plans a substantial tax increase via 2020 referendum.
Commentary on temporary madison school board memBer appoIntment, replacing Mary Burke
The temporarily six-person School Board is scheduled to decide Monday who will join the body for a nine-month stint. During that time, the board will hire a permanent superintendent and work on a potentially large November 2020 facilities referendum.
Those interested in the appointment have until 4 p.m. Friday to apply for the vacancy, which was created after Mary Burke resigned earlier this month.
As of Tuesday afternoon, those who have applied are David Aguayo, David Blaska, Carol Carstensen, Ricardo Cruz, Alexis Dean, Steve King, Pamela Klein, Dwight A. Perry, Arlene Silveira, Jeff Spitzer-Resnick and Calista Storck.
Carstensen and Silveira are both former School Board members. Elected six times, Carstensen served between 1990 and 2008. Silveira was on the board between 2006 and 2015.
Former School Board member Ed Hughes has also expressed interested in the position but said he had yet to file his application by Tuesday evening.
Aguayo, 26, is an executive assistant at the state Department of Workforce Development. He also managed the unsuccessful campaign this spring for School Board candidate Kaleem Caire and ran as an independent for a state Legislature seat in 2016.
After losing his race for the School Board in April, Blaska, a former Dane County Board supervisor and conservative blogger, has said he is applying to bring political diversity to the board.
Cruz, 52, a School District employee, is an administrative assistant helping with federal Title 1 funding. He ran for the District 9 seat on the Madison City Council in 2013 and also served on the city’s Equal Opportunities Commission from 2009 to 2011.
The large field of applicants includes several former School Board members, public education advocates, parents, recent MMSD graduates, Freedom Inc. staff and others looking to serve on the board as it faces critical decisions over the next few months. The board plans to select a new superintendent and prepare for a facilities referendum in 2020.
For the seasoned former board members, their experience on these two tasks were motivation to return to their old gig.
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district spends far more than most, however we have long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Commentary on The taxpayer supported Madison School Board’s GoVernance Plans: Replacement member and SuperintendenT search
“Given that Mary will not be attending any future meetings, I do feel a sense of urgency in getting this filled,” Reyes said. “I don’t want to move forward through some of the important discussions and decisions we’ll have to make … so i think it is going to be imperative that we move through the process pretty rapidly. We can still do a really transparent process and move quickly through it.”
Under board policy, a vacant seat must be filled by appointment within 60 days of a resignation.
Public notice will be posted in the Wisconsin State Journal from July 12 to July 19. Applicants’ submissions will be publicly available on July 19 before the board votes to appoint a new member on July 22.
“I feel like this timeline is really tight,” board member Cris Carusi said, noting the quick turnaround between applications being due and a vote on the candidate three days later. “This feels way too compressed to make a good decision and I would argue for stretching it out even another week.”
Though there was no vote on the timeline, Reyes said that if the board feels it needs more time to review applications it could explore that option later in the month.
Anyone 18 years or older who resides in the Madison School District can apply to be considered by submitting a letter of interest to the district detailing what qualities they can bring to the School Board, a statement on three issues the district faces and how the prospective board member would address them.
Several elections are on the horizon for the seat over the next two years. Though Burke’s term would have lasted until 2021, whoever is appointed would have to decide by late December if they will run in the April 2020 election to finish out the last year of Burke’s term. Terms on the Madison School Board are three years, but whoever is appointed to Seat 2 must run to complete the one-year term before being able to run for a full three years.
Board member Kate Toews said it “would be very beneficial” having an applicant with experience in referendums or hiring a superintendent.
The last time the School Board appointed someone to fill a vacancy was in 1997 when Nancy Mistele resigned because she was moving out of the School District. Sixteen people applied to replace her.
David Blaska, a former Dane County Board member who lost his School Board race this year to Ali Muldrow, said Monday that he will apply to fill the empty seat after saying Friday he would not.
The conservative blogger said he has “no hope of being named.”
“Still, one must fight the good fight,” he said.
Of the other two candidates who ran in the April election and lost, TJ Mertz said he is not interested in applying and Kaleem Caire said Friday he had not had enough time to make a decision. An attempt to reach Caire Monday night was not successful.
Related:
2013 – 2019: What will be different, this time?
Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results
Spending, achievement, taxes and Madison’s school climate
The School Board will also soon be the public face of a facilities referendum that MMSD is eyeing for the November 2020 election. The proposed facilities upgrades currently focus on East, La Follette, West and East high schools, which have an average age of 75 years old and have been identified as having significant deferred maintenance needs that have piled up over the years.
The price tag for the facilities plan is still unknown, but could range from $120 million to $280 million, according to plans presented to the School Board earlier this spring. The ask could be significant — in 2015, Madison voters authorized a $41 million school facility improvement plan that addressed needs across the district.
Pressure to pass a referendum of this size is on the district, as neighboring school districts have recently approved a slew of referendums for new schools and upgrades in the Middleton-Cross Plains, Verona Area and Sun Prairie school districts.
Students and parents from Madison West have been on a campaign of sorts to push the School Board to prioritize upgrades there. West is acknowledged as one of the most space-constrained high schools. The swimming pool lags behind current standards and has led to students developing health problems, according to several students who testified before the board.
Cheatham said the district is also attempting to look at facilities inequities, including identifying how to better serve areas that do not have a neighborhood school.
Though Vander Meulen said the board will have to manage its expectations for what it can accomplish this term, items such as improving facilities have to be prioritized.
“We can’t do everything all at once, but with some of the stuff happening at West right now with the tiles falling off the pool, we have to make sure nobody gets hurt,” Vander Meulen said.
The district plans to present an initial range of options for the referendum to the School Board in May. The School Board would need to authorize a referendum by May 2020 if it wanted to get the project on the November ballot.
“What we are looking at is a big, big project when you look at renovating four high schools that are all old,” Burke said. “We’re going to have to work to gather community support to get it passed … this almost could be a historic referendum in Madison.”
Madison has long spent far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 school districts – now around $20k per student.
This despite long term, disastrous reading results.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: a planned Madison tax increase for bricks and mortar? Will space utilization and attendance boundaries be addressed first? 1% spent on maintenance
Wiese said the district has an annual maintenance budget of about $5.4 million for 4.5 million square feet of space. The high schools alone have deferred maintenance needs of $154 million, according to a study completed in 2017.
In 2015, district voters overwhelmingly passed a $41 million facilities referendum targeting improvements in 16 school buildings. Those projects, primarily at elementary and middle schools, wrapped up last summer and focused on creating accessible and secure entrances, adding classroom space and putting in elevators.
“There was the potential of a bigger ask coming down the way once we finished those projects,” Wiese said.
To get a referendum on the November 2020 presidential election ballot, the School Board would need to take action by May of next year.
Mr Wroge fails to mention total taxpayer spending for our K-12 school District $518,955,288.
Where did the money go? Unanswered questions on a 2005 maintenance referendum.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate & Local Property Tax Increase Rhetoric
President Barack Obama’s budget will lead to deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, the CBO estimated Friday.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said President Barack Obama’s budget would lead to annual deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion for the next decade.
The estimates are for larger deficits than the budget shortfalls expected by the White House.
Annual deficits under Obama’s budget plan would be about $976 billion from 2011 through 2020, according to a CBO analysis of Obama’s plan released Friday.
Madison school ‘budget gap’ really a tax gap
Try “tax gap” or “revenue problem.” These are terms that Superintendent Dan Nerad — who is slated to offer his budget recommendations to the School Board on March 8 — and other school district players are starting to use to describe the financial troubles the district is facing.
What’s commonly been defined as the district’s budget gap in the past — the difference between the cost to continue existing programs and salaries and what the district is allowed to tax under state revenue caps — is actually $1.2 million. That’s the amount the district would still have to cut if the board were willing to tax to the maximum amount allowed under the state revenue limits. (And in past years, Madison and almost every other district in the state have taxed to the limit.) But if you add in the drop in revenue from the state — about $17 million for the 2010-2011 budget — the gap grows to $18.2 million.
It’s fair to ask then, what makes up the other $11.6 million that the administration calls the $29.8 million 2010-2011 budget gap? In a rather unorthodox manner, Nerad and company are including two other figures: $4 million in levying authority the district was granted through the 2008 referendum and $7.6 million in levying authority within the revenue limit formula.
Confused? You’re not alone. It’s got many folks scratching their heads. But the bottom line is this: Although the district has the authority to raise property taxes up to $312 on an average $250,000 home, it’s unlikely the board would want to reap that amount of revenue ($11.6 million) from increased taxes. Large property tax hikes — never popular — are particularly painful in the current economy.
The Madison School District has yet to release consistent total spending numbers for the current 2009/2010 budget or a total budget number for 2010-2011. Continuing to look at and emphasize in terms of public relations, only one part of the puzzle: property taxes seems ill advised.
The Madison School District Administration has posted 2010-2011 “Budget Gap” notes and links here, largely related to the property tax, again. only one part of the picture. For reference, here’s a link to the now defunct 2007-2008 Citizen’s Budget.
Doug Erickson has more:
Madison school administrators laid out a grim list of possible cuts big and small Friday that School Board members can use as a starting point to solve a nearly $30 million hole in next year’s budget.
The options range from the politically painless — restructuring debt, cutting postage costs — to the always explosive teacher layoffs and school closings.
But the school-closing option, which would close Lake View, Lindbergh and Mendota elementary schools on the city’s North Side as part of a consolidation plan, already appears to be a nonstarter. A majority of board members said they won’t go there.
“It’s dead in the water for me,” said Lucy Mathiak, board vice president.
President Arlene Silveira said the option is not on the table for her, either. Ditto for board members Marj Passman and Maya Cole, who said she immediately crossed out the option with a red pen.
Board members could decide to raise taxes enough to cover almost all of the $30 million, or they could opt to not raise taxes at all and cut $30 million. Neither option is considered palatable to board members or most residents, so some combination of the two is expected.
STRANGER THAN EVER!!!!
In an e-mail to the Board of Education, Roger Price admitted a serious error in the budget documents given to the board only three days ago:
I incorrectly classified some professional positions as administrators and some supervisory positions as clerical.
Price attached a corrected Excel table to show the FTEs in the revised “balanced budget.”
I’ve taken Price’s revised “balanced budget” FTEs and compared them to the current year FTEs in a second Excel table.
Initially, Price’s table show and INCREASE of 5.38 FTE clerical positions. Now he shows a DECREASE of 16.32. His original table showed a DECREASE of 22.70 supervisor FTEs. Now he shows a decrease of 1. For administrators, the original table showed an INCREASE of 2.50. His table now shows a DECREASE of 3.00.
You have to wonder how many other figures are wrong. You have to wonder whether the rest of the budget figures need to be changed throughout the 99-page Financial Summaries document to reflect the errors.
And now the MOST AMAZING CHANGE! Price’s new chart includes the seven members of the board in the FTEs. This has NEVER been done previously, and Price gave no reason in his memo to explain the sudden need to add the board members to the FTEs.
This budget process has GOT TO CHANGE!
Remember, this is the same Roger Price who couldn’t produce a budget on time last year, and then needed hundreds of hours of staff overtime to produce the budget at the last minute! This is the same Roger Price who cost the district tens of thousands of dollars to reprint referendum ballots because of “miscommunication”.
