As I See It
Now is the time to prepare to vote on La Crosse school referendum
After talking with friends recently, it became clear that there is some confusion about the upcoming La Crosse school district referendum. Not just how they will vote, but even just what the referendum being put to voters calls for. The district has been working for the better part of a year to plan for the future and specify the wording of the referendum. There have been open school board meetings where plans were discussed, and people could share their opinions. There have been a series of public information sessions designed to answer questions about the district’s plans to close four elementary schools and build a new one. The district has sent mailings to voters to explain the referendum. But apparently that effort has not been enough for some voters. The plan would address declining enrollment, the district’s aging buildings and fewer dollars to operate them by asking voters to approve $53 million in new spending that would build a new elementary school while closing Emerson, Spence and Hintgen, along with the Hogan Administrative Center and building a new school at that location. If you still aren’t certain what the plan calls for or whether you should support it, there is still time before next month’s election. A page on the district’s website outlines the plans, and you can contact any school board member with your questions. The time to do that is now. Because you can only make an informed decision when you are aware of just what they are asking of you.
Kevin
October 2, 2024 at 6:25 am
Voting no – don’t need no new stinking schools, can’t seem to use the ones we have properly or productively. Why would I ever give you another $53million. I would give you a larger operating budget, to be spent on the building maintenance/upkeep only.
Libertarian Guy
October 2, 2024 at 8:39 am
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 costs via reduced spending, closing schools, and, where possible allowing natural attrition to downsize the staff to reflect declining enrollment. Instead, the school board and led by superintendent Engel have painted themselves into a corner with a referendum 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 decisions to close schools and reduce staff (by attrition) they fiddled the past two years and now they have 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 Rick Solem interview that they will layoff teachers if the referendum does not pass. He has made veiled threats to do this in previous interviews, but spelled it out this time. Instead of painting themselves into a corner, the school board and superintendent should have used the past two years to reduce spending, allow attrition to prevent harming teachers via layoffs, and to get the financial house in order. Instead, they are now saying vote “yes” to the referendum or face consequences. Unfortunately, it is their failure of leadership that put them into this position. So now the community has to decide between two equally bad choices to either raise taxes by $53.5 million or fire teachers because of our superintendent’s fiscal mismanagement. If the referendum fails, they will be scrambling to figure out Plan B and the teachers and students will pay the consequences. If the referendum succeeds, which it may because teachers have heard the threat against them, then we residents will all pay more to live in our community and the board and superintendent will be rewarded for their ongoing mismanagement. They have no Plan B. They do not know what they will do with the school buildings that will be closed. They reduced school resource officers only to figure out later that they need to add a school resource officers when response times increase significantly. They adopted standards based grading, which upset students, teachers, and parents. And now they want to collect millions more in this time of high inflation and add to the cost of debt service with another large long term loan so they can fool the public with “easy payments” for the next 20 years.
walden
October 2, 2024 at 1:21 pm
I received the “Elementary Upgrade” mailer. It says the $53.5 million referendum will result in a $.40 property tax “increase over the current mill rate.” That is $40 per 100,000 of home value.
This doesn’t make sense to me because these same people told us a $200 million new high school was only $8 per $100,000.
So, I ran the numbers:
1) The referendum amount is only the principal amount to be borrowed: $53.5 million.
2) Interest would add approximately $1.5 million annually. It seems the District ignores the interest cost that taxpayers will also have to pay for.
3) Annual payments, including interest would be approximately $4.5 million per year for 20 years.
4) $4.5 million spread over $6.5 billion of property value in the La Crosse School District = $.69 per $1,000 of value or $173 annually for a home assessed at $250,000.
So again, they are selling this BS based on incorrect $40 per $100,000 home (note there are no homes selling for that amount in La Crosse).
But, the Median Price for an existing home in La Crosse in 2023 was $265,000, which will see a tax impact of $173 annually. Plus whatever the City and County pile on now that the Covid era free money is exhausted. Also, the new “City Administrator” will have his wish list of spending projects to make his mark on the community just like the School Superintendent.
How come we don’t ever hear about the “affordable housing” issue when it comes time to raise property taxes on homeowners?
Vote NO on the referendum.
Libertarian Guy
October 2, 2024 at 2:04 pm
Well stated Walden. Politicians of all kinds, including members of our school board and superintendent love to play games with numbers. And that in fact is what they are doing. They parse the information intentionally to make it sound inexpensive and easy. But everything is easy if you wanna borrow money and spread debt across many years. They don’t consider total interest. They don’t consider that existing taxes are already exorbitant. They don’t consider unwise choices of the past like failing, too appreciate old buildings and to maintain them properly. If the Logan school was such a disaster, why did a developer want to buy it and why did the Heritage preservation faction of city council designate it as a historical building That needed to be preserved? They want to spend money when they should be reducing cost. They sell the expenditure as “good for the kids” The kids who won’t attend the new school and without mentioning the retired people, the people that want to retire, but can’t, the impact on residents on fixed incomes, and they denigrate school buildings as old to justify building a new building while ignoring the neglect and failure By previous boards and superintendents to properly maintain the buildings. Many of the Existing school are newer than most homes in La Crosse but the homeowners don’t get to tear down their homes and build new ones and charge it to the taxpayers. We try our best to put fiscally conservative people on the school board, but they fail to rain in the superintendent who, by the way, thinks he knows what’s best for us. Taxes keep going up and rent goes up because landlords pay taxes too and then the city imposes greater taxes trying to build “affordable housing” (code for subsidized housing paid by others), thereby working against one another.
Sam
October 2, 2024 at 6:19 pm
It saddens me that we can lose these buildings all at once. UWL has long been trying to o get their hands on Emerson Elementary and Crowley Park. As far as the other schools go some may indeed be historic, especially Hogan Center. The architecture is amazing and unique.
The other things to consider are future epidemics. This year it is Pertussis. Building a MEGA SCHOOL would make social distancing almost impossible aside from shutting school.
Other problems that exist in larger schools are bulling, and greater competition for band, drama, athletics and so on. There would also be fewer teams to play against.
In an emergency it would be more difficult to evacuate the student body. Special needs students student would not get the same level of support, either.
VOTE NO!
walden
October 2, 2024 at 8:17 pm
The closure of Lincoln and the way it was done was tragic…for the students, teachers, the Lincoln neighborhood, and District taxpayers.
All the School District achieved was moving all the same students, faculty, support staff and administrators into other buildings. Not a dime was saved in the process, and in fact money was spent making room for the addition of students at Longfellow. No plan, no savings, no improvements to education.