Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Custom Search
(photo ©2008 Bruce Fritz)
About Me
- Peter Sobol
- My family moved to Monona in 2003 and have been happily ensconsed in the Frost Woods Neighborhood ever since. I have 2 kids who graduated from Mg. I have been serving on the school board since April of 2007. We moved back to the Midwest in 2002 after spending 10 years in California, where I was a Department Director for Maxtor, a Fortune 500 company. In truth we left California largely because of the school situation - chronically underfunded schools did not offer the kind of programs or opportunities we wanted for our children. We picked Monona because our thorough research showed that this was a place we would really like to educate our kids. Our experience has taught us to value the quality schools we have here in Monona, and the importance of careful stewardship to maintain community support for those schools.
24 comments:
Thinking a referendum is looming at some point, will MG reach out and talk with all of these Districts NOW so there is no tail chasing later saying I wish we would have or could have?
School Boards don't pass referenda, citizen groups do. I bet if you check into these school districts you will find most of them had an active citizen group pushing to pass the referendum. If you feel this board should have a referendum, organize your friends and neighbors to tell the school board this is what you want and that you will work to get it passed. This school district belongs to the residents of this district, not the school board.
Appreciate your comments and there is no arguement on the district belonging to the residents, which vote in the board members to be leaders. However, residents do not put out the referendum question. Our leaders and community have worked well together in the past. Some members of the SB have already said they feel they are behind schedule for educating the community for a possible upcoming referendum. No doubt our community will have citizen groups working both sides of the issue. If one looks at the potential cut list from this year, one can get a pretty good idea of what items will not be funded in the near future and where things are headed. With the current cycle, it seems for the distric leaders to plan one way or the other, the funding issue or further cutting issue question will need to be answered no later than next spring.
Then get 10 friends and neighbors to show up at the next board meeting and tell them this. Tell them you will be the core of a group working for it. If you can make it 20 people, even better. Time is wasting! You can make this happen. Be involved in setting the referendum question and timing so you can believe in it. Do not leave this to 7 people, one of whom is leaving, to sit and wonder how much support exists. Time for those who care to get busy and make some noise!
I am curious about how many of those districts that passed operating referendums are still paying for a $30MM middle school?? We have a LONG way to go before I can afford to pay more taxes on the school side of my tax bill. Thanks for getting back to us on this Peter.
Oh yummy in my tummy. Let's keep chewing that old bone because remodeling Winnequah for a middle school would have been free and the extra building we would have needed to keep open would be free too. How 'bout you compare the savings of having one less building to what we're paying each year for the new school? We can slice this pie a hundred ways but how about we just don't? Instead, how about we consider the merit of maintaining our home values by maintaining a really good public school district? Who will want to buy our homes if this district gets a reputation of large classes sizes and reductions in course offerings and programs?
I would also add that the new school is one of the most energy efficient in the state, so it has lower operating costs, and busing costs are less because the most students live in CG.
Whatever. Talk away. It doesn't change the state of my tax bill, or the FACT that cg needs another elementary school. I can't afford any more taxes and so I will vote against a referendum because this district has been incredibly irresponsible. Many of my neighbors are with me.
Peter, please answer the question and put this debate to rest!
a fact is not a fact because someone says it is fact. cg does not need another elementary school. maybe you should find out what is happening with our student population numbers before you make such ignorant comments. things change but you don't know that if you insist on living in the past rather than the present.
Total enrollment and projections for the CG elementary schools show trend, and both those schools can accommodate current enrollment. So it is not a "fact" that CG needs another elementary school.
http://www.mononagrove.org/cms_files/resources/JAN%202012%20ENROLREPORT%20BOE.pdf
I would also like to know in what ways you think the district has been "incredibly irresponsible"?
Peter Sobol said...
OK: The five school districts in the article that passed operating referenda are: Benton, Pardeeville, Whitewater, RiverRidge and Weston. Mill rates in these districts range from 10.53 to 13.61. All these districts have mill rates well above average (9.84), and all but one is in the top 25% for mill rate. One of these districts has a significantly higher mill rate than MG. Of the 5 districts, 3 (Whitewater, Pardeeville, Benton) are still paying off building referenda for construction/addition of HS and Middle school facilities.
It is true that MG is significantly above average on mill rates, in part because we have two new schools we are still paying for (the High School and GDS Middle School). The districts with the highest levies are typically those who most recently built schools.
Here are some ways our district appears irresponsible:
Disregarding the many revenue generating/budget reduction ideas given by district staff/community.
The salary and compensation package to our superintendent per WSJ, Jan 15, 2012.
A parent went to the board and offered all cleaning supplies/chemicals/soap etc. free for the entire district. The board said "We don't really know what to do with this" and gave him Mark Scullion's number. Many calls to him were ignored. The amount would have been equal to a teacher salary.
Owning/maintaining all the empty property that our district does.
If you want to be in the real estate business get out of education. I know Gerlach's answer of not being a good time to sell, but many of us have had to sell things that we would rather not.
Cutting 42% of support staff jobs is irresponsible.
The ONLY budget reduction from the district office is to not hire a HR director that we don't have already? Is this correct? It seems wrong to try to save money by not spending it on something we don't already currently have.
How about administrative furlough days?
These are just the ones on the top of my head, ones that my neighbors talk about.
If you want the public to vote in favor of a referendum you cannot be taking from kids/lowest paid employees while the highest paid sees only benefits and increased compensation.
So, I purposely ignored Peter asking me what I thought was irresponsible, because I thought it would have MORE weight if some other anonymous person that I don't converse with regularly answered the question.
Mr/Ms Unknown Anonymous person!! You are spot on. There are a few more topics we could hit, but I will leave those for when it's time to dispute a referendum request.
School Board, this is going to be a TOUGH sell. Literally, we can't afford it. Gerlach needs to take a hit before I'm ready to talk.
"Gerlach needs to take a hit before I'm ready to talk."
Yes, let's make this debate about one person -- who probably puts in more hours than any other employee of the district -- instead of:
-- High school students sitting in classrooms of 30+ students;
-- Needy children going without support staff;
-- The very real prospects of Monona Grove becoming a less desirable district in which to enroll...
All of it tied in part to unprecedented cuts in public education put in place by the current governor and Legislature.
Good grief. Debate the issues; making this personal is the sure sign of someone who doesn't have anything better to say.
Thanks for your comments, here is my response:
1) Administrator salaries are determined by supply and demand: Craig’s salary is 4th in Dane County, but every other administrator has seen a raise in the last 3 years, while Craig’s has been frozen. The board has also trimmed his benefits. We could lower his salary to the median and save 10K, but keeping a successful Superintendent is a whole lot cheaper than rolling the dice on a new one.
Craig puts in a huge number of very stressful hours, and has had to deal with some extremely difficult situations in the last year, not to mention a difficult & demanding board. I recall a meeting with Craig last spring where he was ashen faced and ill from the stress and extreme hours resulting from the disruption caused by Act 10
2) This is the first I've heard about the cleaning supply offer, so it didn’t come to the board. I'll check.
3) We have sold property in Cottage Grove in the last few years, and the Nichols property is for sale. We haven't received any serious offers. Since selling property to balance the operating budget is poor policy; selling into a bad market and not getting full value would be irresponsible.
4) Support staff cuts are no where near 42% - it's more like 7%.
5) We are cutting $40K from the district office budget, it just so happens the HR specialist position is open at the moment, but that doesn't mean it’s not important. I personally oppose this part of the cuts: dedicated HR staff are important to the efficient management of any organization, this will cost us in the long run.
6) Administrative furlough days could save a few thousand – not going to make a significant difference. At the same time our district office is very lean compared to any comparably sized private organization. There is lots of important work to do.
2) No one offered to supply the district with free cleaning supplies. An alternate supplier was proposed to save money, however Mark reviewed the proposal and found there were not significant savings.
The support staff cuts are $500,000 out of $1.2M. That is 42%.
You raise the point about making this about the superintendent. Clearly, that is not the whole point, nor is it just him. I trust that he is hardworking. But this is about public perception at a moment where we're about to go to the public to ask for more money, and the public will see a budget balanced on the back of those in the classroom while preserving the status quo for the administration.
To the public, it's interesting that we have the 4th highest paid superintendent in a district with the 78th highest enrollment. It doesn't really matter how much one person's salary is, though. When the paper publishes that his vehicle allowance is the highest, or that it "raised eyebrows among some board members" (WSJ). It might be better to take a small pay raise and get rid of the vehicle allowance. It just looks bad at a time when you want to ask taxpayers for more money.
Regarding selling the real estate, it is irresponsible to not consider everything before returning to the taxpayers for more money, even if the land is not worth as much as in an up market. What is nowadays? It is about perceptions, and without the appearance that the district is willing to do everything needed first, the referendum will not have as much support as it could have. By not being willing to save a few thousand here and there, the district alienates members of the community. This is how everyone in the real world budgets their money.
A few thousand in administrative furlough days is not worth it? How many people in the district do not already have furlough days, or contribute more now to their insurance or pensions, or forgo paid cell phone plans? Certainly every state employee, university employee, and more than a few private companies have employees who are familiar with these measures. Things like this could potentially be a bit more than a few thousand dollars, but more important than this is (again) perception. A few thousand in furlough days entered into the district budget would look like at least an effort was being made.
Of course we are leaner than a private company. We should be. We don't have a CEO. We are a public entity, and we need the public trust.
"...without the appearance that the district is willing to do everything needed first, the referendum will not have as much support as it could have."
In the past few years, the district and board have:
-- Closed an entire school (Maywood) to save on annual operating costs (hundreds of thousands of dollars, annually;
-- Found an innovative way to rent out Maywood, with more than $150,000 coming into the district annually, through an education program that benefits MG students (Neustro Muendo);
-- Partially closed a school (Nichols, where one wing of the building is mothballed) and moved programs that were once off-campus (with annual leasing costs) to Nichols (which is cheaper in the long run, and short run for that matter);
-- Consolidated 6th graders into one building, saving on staffing costs;
-- Cut supply, travel, and training budgets at every school;
-- Reduced busing costs through extending walk zones;
-- Cut the number of teachers in the district, leading to larger class sizes in every building, notably the high school;
-- Increased fees required of students to participate in athletics.
Yes, the district and board need to be thoughtful about how to approach a potential referendum. But to suggest that the board and district haven't been trying to save money, and generate income, for the district, is to see a few trees (unsold property, furlough days, superintendent's salary) and completely miss the forest you are standing in.
Your top three items, while no doubt creating savings, came at least 1-2 years later than they should have.
I agree with the posting from early this morning. Furloughs etc. were dismissed as not creating enough savings on their own; perhaps true enough. But as an investment in the success of the referendum, small measures like these are valuable. The public will recognize these hardships as something they've had to go through too. Without it, to the public, we haven't gone the extra mile before asking for their tax dollars.
I favor a referendum. I want it to succeed.
"Your top three items, while no doubt creating savings, came at least 1-2 years later than they should have."
Not so:
-- Most of Nichols (save for the administrative offices) was mothballed following the passage of the referendum in 2006. Off-campus program were moved in there AFTER those leases expired.
-- Madison school officials delayed their expansion of Neusto Muendo not because of Maywood not being available, but because the district was on the fence on whether to expend dollars for Madison Prep, or Neustro Muendo. When Madison Prep fell through, the Madison district renewed its interest in expanding the program to Maywood.
-- There's an argument that Maywood's closing was delayed by a year. But waiting that year, although it put pressure on that year's budget, gave folks in Monona time to adjust to the notion that Winnequah was suitable as a pre-K-5 building, and eventually showed the district/board's willingness to close an underutilized school. If that delay is your rationale in voting against a potential referendum, then you're simply looking for reasons to oppose it.
Sure, small things matter. But big things matter more. And please remember that these budget cuts, while difficult, were manageable (and being made) until the unprecedented cuts in state education aide.
I don't think this district is ready to set a referendum. I would like the board to show us the evidence from this community that people have asked for this. The budget reduction hearings were very poorly attended. A board member has told me they received very few emails, letters and phone calls. The public sees no urgency and we're talking about a referendum? This referendum will not pass without grass roots support and that does not exist right now. Also very clear from the above posts is that there will be vocal, maybe even organized, opposition. We have a recipe for disaster for this district and our communities if the board doesn't recognize how little the public is engaged in this issue.
Gerlach said in the paper yesterday that he thinks it's a good idea to rush it for a November vote. I think he is going to be very unpleasantly surprised.
"Gerlach said in the paper yesterday that he thinks it's a good idea to rush it for a November vote. I think he is going to be very unpleasantly surprised."
Can we at least be fair with what he said? He didn't say "he thinks it's a good idea..." Here's the excerpt from the paper:
“Additional cuts will be extremely difficult,” Gerlach said. “I believe we have to go to referendum. Once we know the extent of the deficit, what extent do we ask for? We have to have those discussions, and if we can have the appropriate discussions in a timely fashion, I think we can meet November.”
Seems like a pretty big IF qualifies his commitment to a November referendum.
Post a Comment