Education
La Crosse Schools superintendent Engel on 5th graders putting governor in precarious spot, plus more on $53 million referendum
School District of La Crosse superintendent, Dr. Aaron Engel, joins WIZM’s La Crosse Talk on Monday to discuss more on the $53.5 million referendum to build one elementary and update another, plus how nervous he was when fifth-graders had Wisconsin’s governor in a precarious situation.
La Crosse Talk airs weekdays at 6-9 a.m. Listen on the WIZM app, online here, or on 92.3 FM / 1410 AM / 106.7 FM (north of Onalaska). Find all the podcasts here or subscribe to La Crosse Talk PM wherever you get your podcasts.
Engel discusses how the weekly public sessions have been attended over the past month, with six more to go before the November election cycle is over. We also talked about how some of the staff would be affected by the referendum passing and schools being closed, or if it doesn’t pass — and schools still close.
Last week, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers visited an elementary school in the district, and fifth graders had him sitting in the middle of a canoe and took him for a ride on a French Island pond, which likely made everyone a little nervous — including security.
We also talked about how the bands did in the Oktoberfest parades.
Libertarian Guy
October 1, 2024 at 2:44 pm
The school district of lacrosse (School Board) under the leadership of Aaron Engel continues to be fiscally mismanaged. A wise person in charge would get their financial house in order. That means cutting cost via reduced spending, closing schools, and, where possible allowing natural attrition to downsize the staff to reflect declining enrollment. Instead, the school board and superintendent painted themselves into a corner With a question that essentially asks the community whether to spend money to save money or save money by spending money. This is a ridiculous conundrum because you can’t save money by spending money at the same time. Instead of making the hard decision to close schools and reduce staff (by attrition) they fiddled the past two years and now put the decision into the hands of the voters with an up or down vote on the referendum. Superintendent Engel made it clear during this interview that because he and the board have painted themselves into a corner, they will layoff teachers if the referendum does not pass. The school board and superintendent should have used the past two years to reduce spending and allow attrition to prevent harming teachers and to get the financial house in order. Instead, they are now saying vote yes or face consequences, But it is their failure of leadership that put them into this position. So now the community has to decide Between two equally bad choices. Raise taxes by $54 million or fire teachers because of our fiscal mismanagement. If the referendum fails, they will be scrambling to figure out Plan B, and the teachers and students will pay the consequences for it. If the referendum succeeds, which it may because teachers feel like they have a “gun” to their backs, then we all pay more to live in our community, The board and superintendent will be rewarded for their mismanagement.