All right well I guess let's let's start with where we are today. Walk me through the process
and the decision to go to referendum both the operating one and and your construction.
Sure yeah I'll start back in in 2020 when we chose to go to referendum in in April of 2020
excuse me in in November of 2020 we chose to do a 1.25 recurring operational budget and at that
time we looked at a capital improvement project that consisted just less just short of 30 million
dollars and we told the public at that point that we were still in the midst of right in the middle
of a declining enrollment that we anticipated would continue to last for anywhere from six to
ten years and it did a study with UW populations lab out of Madison and that's what they showed
as well and so we knew that that was going to be a bandaid that was going to get us out there
you know anywhere from three to six years and the operational referendum passed the capital
referendum failed narrowly in November of 2020 we went back for a revised version of that
capital referendum in April of 2021 that failed quite substantially okay and as a result we went
from a five building footprint down to a three building footprint we brought our seventh and
eighth graders up to the high school and we closed and subsequently sold two of our elementary
buildings and we're now in a three building model fast forward now four years we continue to have
some of the deferred maintenance issues that we had back in 2020 we're in a smaller footprint
so it's been a little bit easier to manage we don't have as many ruffs to deal with as many
parking lots to deal with etc but we still have issues our community you know feels that
our quote-unquote new high school which was built in 1996 is new but it's pushing 30 years old and
many of the original materials ruffing parking lots things like that just have not lasted
through the course of three decades so we did a facility study hired Nexus solutions
out of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota to do a facility study last year and they came back
and they said you know there's a lot of things that you could fix but here are some things that
you really need to explore fixing and that that price tag was you know pushing 80 million dollars
of things that really could have been addressed and so with that we said we have to get the
communities involvement in this we have to understand what their priorities are
we are a public school and therefore we have to listen to the public and the stakeholders
of the public so in December of 2023 we hired the Morris Leatherman company to do a public survey
and they do it the old-fashioned way they call people up and they make sure that they hit all
of the different demographics within our district and get good feedback from them on terms of what
their priorities are and they essentially found and when they reported the survey results they
found that the community supported and when I say supported at least 55 percent of the people
that they polled supported nine different things they supported everything from number one being
safety and security to number two ADA accessibility technical education upgrades in our classrooms
here at the high school air conditioning at our primary and our intermediate school
our high school has air conditioning but the other two buildings do not
we have energy efficiency and envelope windows doors etc that need to be addressed
deferred maintenance again our roof on the high school is 30 years old at least portions of an
hour we've been able to replace some of that through their budget money and things like that
over the last couple years hard surface areas parents that drop off bus drop off pick up things
like that in addition to high school auditorium upgrades sound and light equipment in the auditorium
again is 30 years old those are the top seven and then number eight was athletic turf onto our
athletic fields and number nine was new gymnasium and or fitness center and so the community supported
those those nine things with 55 percent or more supporting that however when it came down to the
financial impact what could they actually afford from a property tax increase on their financial
bill their financial impact wouldn't support online of those priorities and so we found the
number that they could support we found that the average homeowner could support a $15 a month
increase and that would get us the top seven priorities so it would not get us the athletic
turf and it would not get us a new fieldhouse or audit excuse me fitness center okay and I think
our board was comfortable with that I know I was administratively because the first seven things
truly were needs and you get down to number eight and nine and they felt a little bit more like a
want right like we would like athletic turf we would like a new gym or a fitness center but we really
didn't have to have those and so it kind of felt like it was a natural break to address those top
seven and so that's kind of where we're at from a capital standpoint this will be a 27 million
dollar just just north of a 27 million dollar capital to address those top seven issues in
its addition to that we are still facing declining enrollment our our freshmen sophomores juniors
and seniors all have residents in those age groups that are over a hundred students and then from our
eighth grade and below they're all like in the 80s okay so there's there's a real cliff there
between our eighth and ninth grade class and so we know that we have four more years of of
declining enrollment that we've got to get through and so the thought process there was let's do a
four-year non-recurring operational referendum get us through the four years of declining enrollment
and then really be able to reassess where we're at in four years and so that's kind of how we've
got to where we are today and so those will be the two questions on the ballot in april
so when it comes to making sure the public understands what they're saying yes to
how do you have to sell it to them in this in this environment to make sure that they understand
that this is outside of what the state does and this is outside of what a different district did
or this you know these are things that if we don't do this this won't happen or these these are the
consequences yeah one I never think that it's our job to sell a referendum to the public I think
our job is administrators and our school board is to simply inform the public right and to make
sure that they understand what they're getting if they vote yes and I think it's equally important
to make sure that they understand what they're going to be losing or sacrificing if they vote no
and so one of the things that we did post-pandemic was we added some instructional learning positions
through the ESSER dollars our board had approved 14 FTE over the course to be able to be used
over the course of two years our original goal was that we would have 10 the first year to really
help address the the learning losses due to the pandemic and then we would scale that down to
four the next year we weren't able to fill all 10 of those positions and so we ended up with
eight and a half the first year and five and a half the next year and that next year being 23 24
and so one of the things that will happen if that operational referendum fails is that we'll be
forced to eliminate those five and a half positions we will not be able to sustain them and while that
was funded with with ESSER dollars and that is stimulus money through the pandemic we're finding
that we're not completely out of the pandemic when it comes to addressing learning losses students
are coming in lower than where they should be from a grade level standpoint and we've got to make
sure that we have enough supports to get them caught back up and so that's a real issue not
just in the Richland School District but from our neighboring districts certainly the folks I've
talked to an education this is going on everywhere and so if we don't pass the operational referendum
that'll be one of the first things that needs to happen is that that we will eliminate those
five and a half FTE positions that we've added in addition part of that that operational
referendum is is going to be to try to get our staff our teachers our support staff our aids
our food service everybody in our district to competitive wages because one of the things that
we found is that over the course of trying to be very fiscally responsible over the last several
decades we have not increased our wages to a point to keep up with neighboring districts and so
it's very common for us to have teachers reach 55 reach retirement age at least retirement eligible
from a local benefit standpoint retire from the Richland School District at 55 56 57 collect the
local retirement benefit only to go to a neighboring district and continue teaching and that was
disheartening to me that we were losing veteran experienced teachers people who have been a staple
in our community and in our school district for so many years that we were losing them in the last
few years of their you know their teaching experience to neighboring districts simply because of pay
we often lose teachers or don't get teachers that are interviewing that we're offering positions
too because a neighboring district and when I say neighboring I'm not just talking to
joining us but you know within a 34 40 mile radius we're losing them to those districts simply because
they pay more and I've always felt we didn't need to be the top paying school district around but
we can't be the lowest and we've got to be somewhere above the middle right and I believe that having
a good culture and a good community and a good experience and having good coworkers and all
those things really do play a part in a good work experience but we do have to be financially
competitive and so this referendum would help give us to be financially competitive as well
so on your on your sheet you listed as a zero dollar tax increase so explain how that works
that if some people get you how can it cost zero dollars but yeah absolutely that's a great question
one one that we often field so when we pass the referendum in 2020 the first year that that went
on the tax burden you know it was it was just that it went up and it went up to nine dollars and
twelve cents per thousand to our tax rate or mail rate the next year the school district because
we're positively aided we got aided on that money from the state and so if everything were
just left to just natural reduction our property taxes in our community would have actually went
down in years two and three because we would have gotten aided on those expenditures our school
board decided to not put us in a position where our mail rate or our tax rate was unhealthy low
which it was prior to the the passage of the 2020 referendum we were down into the fives at one point
and and so we wanted to stabilize that mill rate and then use that to pre-pay some of our
existing debt we had a 2016 referendum that was passed and our debt payment was structured so
that we didn't make a single penny of principal payment until 2026 we were making all interest
payments and so by using what's known as diffeasance we kept the tax rate at nine dollars and twelve
cents and then used that additional revenue to pre-pay some principal on that 2016 debt as a result
we've taken an eight point seven million dollar debt and we've got it down to just over four
million dollars in just a couple of years and so then we've been able to use that gap
to do this operational referendum essentially at a zero tax impact if it fails we would stabilize
the mill rate keep it at nine dollars and twelve cents and continue to pay off that debt and if
it passes we would stop the diffeasance and apply it towards this debt so when you talk about the
diffeasance then would you go back to paying interest only until 2026 that is correct yes yeah we would
go back we'd restructure that debt work with Barrett our financial advisors to restructure that if needed
and again as we saw or if we see the the mill rate drop my guess would be I can't speak for what
you know future boards would do and my recommendation would be that we allow it to drop
to account for inflationary rates so that people don't see a tax increase on their property tax bill
but if we can find a way that their net tax stays the same I could foresee a situation where the
school district would continue to use diffeasance in some fashion but not nearly to the extreme
that we have been using it and that's an accounting methodology that's that's allowed under the
revenue caps and state law that I know that's been talked about trying to eliminate that correct
yes I don't know where they're at legislatively regarding that but it is allowed under the revenue
limit to assess additional levy to prepay what's known as fund 39 debt or debt that is
referendum approved and so a district can only do that if they have referendum debt out there for
capital improvements if they're taking out bonds on and then they can use that diffusion strategy
as a way to help stabilize the mill rate oftentimes you'll see districts go to referendum when they
have debt falling off and so they'll strategically plan for a referendum when they know they have a
loan coming off the books where the property tax or the mill rate would have naturally dropped
and then they'll use that to fill in the gap so that it's not such a huge impact so I believe you
know again this is my personal and professional opinion that I believe we've been fiscally responsible
in stabilizing the mill rate and prepaying debt I believe that we were kind of in a situation prior
to that where we had a lot of credit card debt out there and we were simply making the minimum
payments and yes it doesn't hurt our credit limit by doing that but are we really being
fiscally responsible paying all this additional interest when we could be attacking it a little
bit more aggressively so that was the approach that we took so could you see a circumstance in
future years where question two debt is actually handled the same way I could see that where instead
of stretching that out over 20 years that we could maybe pay that off in a little less especially if
more equalization aid comes in from the state and we're able to again we don't want to raise
taxes and ideally if both of these questions passed you know we will go from nine dollars and 12
cents up to ten dollars and 22 cents that's getting to the edge of where it's probably higher than we
would like it so I would envision you know if I could look into a crystal ball and see what's
going to happen if over the next five or six years if that were just naturally to drop back into the
nine dollar range I would foresee our boards considering allowing that to drop but probably
not allowing it to drop more than the nine twelve or nine dollar mark I don't see us getting back
into the seven or eighths like we were before but again that's hypothetical and I don't know
the answer to that for sure I want to go back to the 2021 budget session sure I know the pure
rolls off the tongue but in that particular budget as you probably remember from a school's
perspective there was a controversy among whether Republicans in the legislature would add on to
the per pupil revenue limit and they decided to do zero dollars for two years because they said
all these schools are so flush with all the federal cash coming in we don't need to give them any
more money they can use that money at the time and the same debate there were democrats and there
were public school advocates that were saying this will cripple schools this will create a
fiscal cliff this will cause huge problems down the road and this the state just sat on the money
at the time you you were not superintendent but you were in the business office here is that
that is correct yes so what was your perspective as you were hearing that debate playing out
yeah everything that you just said is exactly true I mean we knew we were getting uh this
these ester funding positions or this funding mechanism and we knew that there wasn't going to
be a per pupil increase and I think um you know there were so many so much flexibility in how you
could spend ester dollars and I think the key thing with the ester dollars was that unlike other
federal funding dollars like title money and some of those things um you could truly supplant funds
and so you could take funds that you were paying for out of fund ten dollars general fund general
budget dollars and you could supplant that with the ester dollars and so that gave school some
flexibility and how they spent it but it really didn't fix the problem it really didn't give
school districts any kind of a sustainable way to manage these and so you talk about simply in
our district where we where we funded extra positions we had to hire these positions knowing that there
was going to be an end to those and so again that made it difficult to attract good quality people
because it could have been a one-year position and at the most it could have been a two-year
position and that's where we're at we're going to lose good quality people now we've got to do
it through a referendum to offset that that additional revenue but um you know that was the
problem that I saw back then and I think every school district saw that and many of them rolled
the dice and said that okay we're going to just you know deal with it when it went down the road
and we're going to hire additional people others took the approach that nope this is one-time money
let's do one-time things with it perhaps it was capital improvements you saw a lot of school
districts I think address the air quality with air conditioning and other HVAC upgrades and
again that's all fine and dandy those weren't necessarily sustainable expenses that they have
we tried to invest back into our students and in doing so you know we were rolling the dice a
little bit because we didn't know if those positions would continue and and obviously they wouldn't
without without the support of a referendum so at that time was it alarmist to say this will
create a fiscal cliff and create disparities or was it simply being able to see the trajectory of
knowing what was going to happen yeah it was definitely concerning for us the one thing that
we had going for us as a ritual school district we had just passed as I mentioned earlier past the
2020 referendum and we had been very clear to the public that this is a band-aid this is something
we are going to have to go back so what the S or funding cliff or fiscal cliff did was instead
of potentially getting us out six years like maybe we had hoped from a real being real optimist
it did only get us out four years and so we would be operating at a deficit of of over a million
dollars next year if we don't pass a referendum and make the cuts that we need to make and so
we knew that this was happening we also knew that we had already told the public that we would
be lined up to go to referendum and so I think in the back of our minds we had always
known that this was just was probably going to happen in 2024 when the
S or dollars were expended the from a federal perspective when those different budget when
those different bills were passed that became S or S one two and three rather than included those
there was the perspective that that was supposed to be to help kids recover from the pandemic to
catch up academically to help schools accommodate to a new environment so do you think
the way that some of the monies were spent to backfill a budget hole fell in line with the
philosophy of what that money was intended for did it actually help students recover
yeah I think that varies a little bit by district okay if I remember correctly I believe that there
were four different sources that made up S or funding the first one known as S or one was
was the CARES Act and that was a small relatively speaking small influx of money that was given
right away to school districts to to help address PPE and equipment and in our standpoint that was
really what that was spent on right the other was the the gear money which was primarily spent
towards technology and helping students and teachers be able to work in our remote in our
virtual setting we were already a one-to-one device school for the most part so we were able to
you know still upgrade some technology and provide a lot of hotspots those kinds of things
to our families but I believe with 100 certainty that those first two rounds of money I'll be
not not that I have a percentage in the total S or pot were dedicated specifically to what the
federal government and you know wanted them and intended for them to be used for S or two and three
which came about in in the subsequent year after the pandemic you know that was the larger chunk of
money that schools had until I believe September 30th 2024 that they have to spend it we've claimed
all of ours many school districts I believe have although I don't know that with 100 certainty
but I believe that that allowed them to really address it in one of those two ways that we
talked about we chose to reinvest it back into education get get students back in the building
get them in front of teachers if we have to hire more staff to have fewer students in a classroom
those kinds of things we wanted to do that as opposed to these one-time capital expenditures
like HVAC or air conditioning which will be around for 20 years right but we really wanted to try to
focus on addressing the learning loss and so that's where we put it in what other school
districts did I think you could ask 412 school districts and you'd probably get 412 different
variations of how they spent that S or money so if I told you that since the start of the
COVID pandemic that half of all school districts in Wisconsin have gone to operating referendum
would you say that is accurate would you say that's not surprising or are you surprised would that
yeah I believe that our research has shown that since 2020 that over two-thirds of the school
districts in Wisconsin have gone to some sort of a referendum now so half of them be in operation
or that would not surprise me at all I believe that there are 83 going to referendum in April
and I anticipate that number to be higher in November traditionally speaking school districts have chosen
to go to a general election in November for these sorts of things so I just anticipate that number
being even higher and it's a real thing I mean school districts are losing a substantial amount
of revenue due to the S or funding cliff coupled with the lack of state influx in per pupil spending
and in the last biennial budget you know they they added the additional 325 dollars per pupil
but that was a little misleading because what happened in many school districts case certainly
on the western side of the state in rural areas was they gave you the 325 dollars per pupil
but it wasn't net new income because the first thing that had to happen was they took away
the hold harmless exemption that schools had to it had been getting right and so in the case of
the Richland School District for the 2324 budget you know when we first heard we were getting 325
dollars per student we anticipated that being you know over 400 thousand dollars of new revenue
but they took away you know 340 thousand dollars in a hold harmless exemption so what we ended up
netting was about 72 dollars per pupil out of that 325 dollars and so it was a little misleading
in terms of the new money that we were able to get so when you couple those two things together
it doesn't surprise me at all that many many school districts are going to have to go
to referendum just to maintain the the services that they've been providing for our students in
addition to wage increases as it comes to even if they were a competitive school district from
from a salary and wage standpoint just keeping up with inflation transportation costs have
increased dramatically all utility costs have increased dramatically so expenses are going
up revenues going down that's not a formula for success yeah when you add in 21 22 23 is zero
zero and then in your case an effective 72 75 $72 I believe for the 2324 school year and then when
you factor that against inflation and everything else I mean that's you've had a significant decline
in revenue against real for real dollars absolutely you know and the 80 80 thousand
dollars or so of of what truly ended up to be net new money for the 23 24 certainly welcomed
but nowhere near nowhere near what it would take for us to sustain the programming that we had prior
you know we budget 85 thousand dollars for a teacher one teacher position on average for their salary
and their fringe benefits so the 80 thousand dollars of additional money didn't even truly
fund one teacher and that that's a little disheartening knowing that that we were all
anticipating a little bit more money so when I look at the the the fiscal bureaus
print off of what Rich Land received over the course of the three the four allocations if you
counting gear um the the total number they've got here is a little over five million dollars
that sounds accurate okay and then last I know that the the lion's share that three million
was uh S or three which is part of what you guys were talking about at your school board last
meeting correct so have you basically been living off that for the past few years when you factor
that against the zero dollars that the state has been giving an additional per pupil revenue
yeah I think that's fair I think it's also accurate to say we did add some of those new
positions to really try to help mitigate the learning loss and so had we been in the same
structure that we were in in 2020-2021 we would not have had to if you just take the pandemic out
but gave us this additional money that you could spend over three years we probably could have
stretched that out a little longer because we didn't have to we wouldn't have had to add additional
teachers and supports into the classroom but again due to the pandemic we had to do that and so
living off of it because we would have been operating under a deficit anyway and adding
those extra positions just exacerbated the problem so when you when you think of the the politics that
go into the decisions surrounding this because it's it's all politics I mean no matter how much
you want to be insulated from that debate it's federal politics and it's state politics
what do you say to a community when you're saying basically you I need your vote to bail out
decisions made elsewhere yeah that's we've tried to be very clear to our public we had a community
forum down at our local bowling alley in their banquet hall a couple weeks ago and one of the
things that I was presenting was why we need this operational referendum because we do have this
declining enrollment which means less revenue to our district which is an entirely different topic
on you know an antiquated formula from 1993 on how the revenue limit is set just a slight comment
on that you know I think it's ludicrous for the state to think that just because a school district
loses 15 students you know in a pre-k through grade 12 scenario covering 15 grades if they lose
15 students that's a a revenue loss of you know 170 thousand dollars but if you average that
that learning that those 15 students out over 15 grades that's one student per grade that doesn't
allow you to make any substantial changes or cuts to your educational program and you can't eliminate
staffing you can't eliminate the internet you can't eliminate any real expenses but yet you're
forced to do it with with less dollars and so that that whole system of how schools are funded
is broken in my opinion it needs to be re-examined but but with that you know we had to communicate
that to our public we had to say look this is this is the reality of the demographics of the
residents in the richland school district again we had a more recent
population study done by uw madison applied population lab showing that the residents
school-age children age four to 18 that live and reside in the richland school district is
declining and it's going to continue to decline for the next few years and so when we can see that
our higher classes in terms of enrollment are in the you know 9th 10th 11th and 12th grade
most people can understand pretty easily that in four years they're not going to be part of our
school district anymore and we're going to be left with small you know fewer
students and if we have fewer students then we're going to have fewer revenue or lesser revenue
and so we've got to explain this to the community that we are simply not getting the funding
that we need to be able to offer the programming that that our stakeholders expect and our students
deserve you represented here in the assembly by a republican who's on joint finance committee
and in the senate this is Howard Marklands district it's cracked by a republican on the
joint finance committee so the most important budget writing committee the most power there
is there a delicate nature of how you approach a public that is likely voting for the very people
that are making the decisions that end up short-changing the school so the year force to go back to them
to say hey i know you probably voted for that guy but it's their decisions that put us in this
situation yeah um i've tried to just be very factual and transparent with with people that
i talk to so when i'm out in the public um explain the why of why we need a referendum i try to
really avoid personal opinion and just just keep to the facts this is why this is how we got here
this is what will happen if we don't on the other end i also try to have conversations with
Tony Kurtz and and Howard Markline in terms of this this is the reality of where school districts
are at so that they understand and i give both of them a lot of credit in terms of they're always
willing to listen and i know that they get around in our area a lot and are probably hearing similar
things i hope that they're they're trying to make a positive change for school finance you know in
the future but i really try to keep those two conversations separate is that just something
that you have personally chosen to do is it just not smart for the schools to wait into that
territory i mean the current climate between schools and politics is not healthy yeah it's
it's not healthy i also i just i think it's a little cleaner um you know when we're doing a
referendum you know campaign informational campaign about a referendum um the laws are pretty clear
on a school district cannot be uh and certainly someone in my position or school board's position
cannot be pro referendum or anti referendum it's our job to simply provide the facts and then
inform the public and provide as many opportunities as we can to to get that information to the public
for to allow them to make an informed decision so i just really uh hesitate in blurring any of
those lines that could possibly jeopardize um where we're at in the future you mentioned something
before about the the choice of which election day to to go to um and that that's interesting
because obviously november does get high higher turnout it should be quite large presidential
election here but that's into the next school you're ready the budgets are already set versus
going at april was that the timing of april and certainty for next year's budget more of a factor
than which election might have higher turnout yeah i think it was twofold really there were
two specific reasons uh and we strongly considered going in november because it does get a higher
turnout every statistical show that it gets a higher turnout and when you get a higher turnout
you're representing more of your stakeholders and so you truly get a little bit better
representation of what your stakeholders want for your public school the problem with going in
november was twofold in our opinion one was the fact that it is already the budgets are set for the
24 25 and so the school board would have had to be willing to operate a year in out of fund balance
and out of our reserves or make those cuts you know for the 24 25 and then have to rehire
you know if the referendum would be successful so that was that was certainly a component
we will now know as we are planning for the 24 25 school year what our situation is after april
second the other was that what i think school districts saw in 2020 was a highly contentious
presidential election and unlike previous general elections in november that one seemed to have a
different flavor to it and i think many people suspect 2024 being similarly contentious and
perhaps drawing people who really aren't concerned about schools and school finance and the residents
of the pupils of the school district but more because they have a horse in the presidential race
and so i think when we coupled those two things together yes we're going to get better turnout
november but one we won't know what our our future holds until after november and the
the volatility that surrounds a highly contentious presidential election i think that our board and
i think many school districts is is evident by you know the 80 plus that are going to referendum in
april um felt that april is just a better choice i mean it's it's known that there's a lower
info voter that shows up in november they are less likely to vote in more elections they are
less informed about elections but they do show up for presidential elections and they are usually
more easily motivated by negative animus surrounding a campaign which doesn't yeah fall in hand in
glove with what you're trying to achieve correct and while an april election may not get as high
of a turnout um it it should show still still show statistically with statistical relevance
you know the representation of our of our stakeholders so we're hoping that that that shows
well and this april is interesting in that it is a presidential primer even though the democratic
side is not really contested at all and the republican side is questionable as to whether
you could call it contested correct it it doesn't have the same flare of last april supreme court
election or in prior presidential primaries but it should be higher so do you when it comes to
turnout and this probably not your area of expertise but it's one of my little things that i look at
i mean how does that factor in because it's not november but it's not a normal april with no supreme
quarter no statewide but it is not a normal presidential primary do you have any expectation
of what that means and who it might draw in i don't yeah i think in a in a perfect world
i think that we would have been able to be financially relevant and sustainable through
november 2026 that would have been when we went in 2020 and we're thinking
best case scenario we can get out six years that would be uh you know the the best case scenario
for us coupled with all of the things that we've already discussed and the the lack of true and
new dollars in the state budget zero in 2021 um in that 72 for us in 2023 the ester money falling
off couple all that in we simply can't make it that long right and so then we're forced to choose
when is the best time to go and we can only ask two questions in a calendar year we're choosing
to do both of them in april hoping that we'll get a good turnout there's um some local races
there's still are some national races from the primary albeit any of them maybe maybe determined
at that point um but we're hoping that we get a good turnout good representation of what our
stakeholders want and and then we can make a plan moving forward all right i do want to ask a
just a couple quick questions about the the info sheet that was handed out last night about the
ester sure one of the things on there one of the largest things on there was the roof um
and according to this it looks like it was somewhere south of five hundred thousand dollars
it was actually uh total if you look at the 22 23 and the 23 24 was just under eight hundred
thousand dollars and so uh we were able to believe it's the second bar graph on that on that chart
shows that we spent all of what we budgeted for last year we obviously knew what that
dollar amount was so that's why it would match up but if you had those two up together it would
be about eight hundred thousand dollars for so just because it hadn't been expended yet
on correct well that'll be done this spring and then we'll be paying for that out of out of
this year's budget before June 30th okay so i mean when you talk about the the positions
added there were some but there were some one-time expenses you that you used the ester absolutely
yes yeah we also back in 2021 decided to give all of our hourly employees again kind of competitive
wages we did a local wage study and realized that many of our people can go work at it you know our
local culvers or walmart and make more money than they were making for a school district so we did
use some of the ester dollars and commit to it for for three years and give everybody a three dollar
per hour raise that was on an hourly wage so that is also trying to be addressed with this operational
referendum because that will be difficult to sustain if we don't have the additional revenue
so one of the this is gets into the political art area again so apologize if you're comfortable
answering this but one of the arguments that i that i hear at the capitol is that you know public
schools don't always deserve a higher level of reinvestment because you know they're underwhelming
and kids are failing and not doing as well and you know sometimes those statements are made about
those people or they or them um and not necessarily our people or you know those in our backyard
but there is there is a thought that you know schools are failing they're failing kids and
kids aren't reading and you know there's more kids coming in with problems out of the covid
pandemic but then when you look at the fact that money that was specifically given to schools to
handle those schools were forced to then backfill a budget that was spent directly left empty and
then the state sat out billions of dollars in its general coffers for years on end
how how do you feel when you start adding that whole cloud of thought together where
they're trying to pin a blame on somewhere there's a political justification when there's a big pot
of money over here and they made you spend different money that would have been used for that yep
yeah i i believe that um well if you want to prioritize prioritize something you have to allocate
the right resources to it and resource fees people money and time right and you have to do all three
of them in order to have any you know substantial change and so you know if if people are saying
that school districts are are failing um i mean that may not necessarily be false okay in terms of
Wisconsin's achievement scores or even the richland school districts achievement scores
comparatively speaking all right but if school districts don't have the proper resources
to truly make an impact on student learning i mean we've had um science books that were uh
that we were using for several years that that were written prior to the the mapping of DNA
right i mean they were truly done from the 80s right and and uh so textbooks and curriculum
because of the lack of funding over the last few decades um haven't been able to keep up and
they've been forced to do so much teaching through being resourceful and when you start
it's great to be resourceful right but when teachers are forced to continually be resourceful
they tend to it's easy to get away from the standards and it's easy to get away from the things
that we have to be teaching couple that with a lack of true investment into people wanting to go
into the education and the profession and i mean we've hired many many teachers that have
bachelor's degree but don't necessarily have the teacher preparation program and have gone
through that extensive program which helps prepare them um but we're it's kind of a hybrid we're
getting backfilled and getting licensures and helping them get that that licensure taken care of but
we don't have the best people that are in math going into the teaching profession we don't have
the best scientists going into the teaching profession because they can make more money
elsewhere and i'm not saying that teaching needs to be you know the same as working in the private
industry but the disparity continues to grow and so you look at you know teachers going into the field
the funding that goes into the field and you know none of it aligns with being highly successful
from an achievement standpoint it just doesn't and so i think you know at the state level at the
federal level if we really want to reinvest back into education invest into our people we've got
to do it and with all three of those with people with time and with the financial resources we
have to develop a better infrastructure we have to have ways to address the mental health needs
of students in in the classrooms we have um especially again in the western part of the state
and in our area we have the demographic makeup we have so many single-family
parents raising children we have so many students that struggle with with mental health and anxiety
and we don't address any of those needs and yet public schools are forced to do more and more
parenting are being asked to be um you know professionals when it comes to health standards
when it comes to mental health standards when we're not trained for those things and we have to
be able to provide the resources to to get these students the help and supports that they need
so that we can truly focus on on achievement but if they don't have the the foundational needs
met if they don't have a a rough to to sleep under if they don't have food on the table if they don't
get a good night's rest if they don't have those fundamental um fundamentals in their in their lives
then how do we expect them to learn in school right and so i think this is a systematic change
that has to take place um you know as a society and we've got to start reinvesting in our future
all right anything else you want to add i probably spoke enough today
quickly before i go can i get you to give me a little bit of your bio history um
when how long you've been at the district different job titles yeah i started off coaching uh
girls basketball in richland center back in 1994 i was a private business owner um through
2012 decided to go back to school and get my my bachelor's because i could see that there was a
i had an ability to influence uh students in a positive way uh through the coaching world
so i got my teaching degree uh did it mostly online um started teaching in in 2014
moved into an administrative role uh in 2017 assistant principal here at the high school
then became the business official shortly after that and then last year took on the interim
superintendent role and then this year the the superintendent role so that's that's a brief synopsis
of my life all right uh and uh please say and spell your name just so i have a correct name yep
the steve board biazen boy o-a-r-diazen dog all right thank you very much thank you i appreciate it
survived do you want to room tone all right so if we can just be quiet for like 30 seconds he's
going to capture the sound of the room which sounds weird but it's a thing
so