Post date: Aug 18, 2016 12:03:24 AM
Quick Answers:
71% of this bond issue is targeted at shifting operating expenses from the general fund to bond funds. This is needed to rebuild the fund balance to help save teaching positions in 2017. The district has suffered large cuts in state funding since 2009, magnified by repeated state revenue failures in 2016. Unless local voters take action, the district expects to be forced to cut more teachers in 2017 and increase class sizes further.
The remaining 29% of the bond is targeted at high-priority facility renovations that were identified in 2011 and 2013 by a large District Long-Range Facilities Planning Committee that included broad community representation. Those projects could not be funded in the 2013 bond issue due to bonding capacity limits. The vast majority of them are targeted at the secondary schools so that the reconfigured campuses serve students more efficiently and effectively.
Since any new bond issue meant the district would have to ask voters for a tax increase, the bond issue planners determined the proposed tax increase must be a responsible one that:
kept the millage below the peer group average
was not a large extra burden on taxpayers (the increase is small change; it only costs a dime a day for a home valued at $100,000)
targeted saving teaching jobs when more state funding cuts hit in 2017
addressed the remaining critical facility needs without adding any signficant new square footage
THIS BOND ISSUE WAS PROMPTED BY THE STATE GOING BROKE IN 2016
Running the bond issue now was prompted by the repeated state revenue shortfalls the district suffered in 2016. State funding has dropped so sharply that even years of cost-cutting efforts could not fully compensate. In 2011 the district reduced from seven to six elementary schools, and in 2015 it reduced from four to three secondary schools.
But the 2016 revenue failures drained the fund balance so low that the district was forced to eliminate 39 jobs for 2016-2017. That included 21 teachers, which was 5% of the entire teaching force. The district cannot maintain the sterling quality of the education it has always provided if the state cuts continue, and projections are that state funding will be cut severely again in 2017.
The district had not originally planned to run a bond so soon after the 2013 bond because the district has reached its bond capacity under the existing millage. Any bond issue at this time requires an increase in property taxes. The district would have preferred keeping the millage steady at about 27 mills, as steady millages are more amenable to voters who are sensitive to tax increases, and a 60% super-majority is required to pass any school bond issue. But the dire financial situation the state funding crisis has put the district in has forced the issue.
WHY WEREN'T SOME OF THESE NEEDS MET IN EARLIER BOND ISSUES?
Bonding capacity limits in 2013 are why, even with the high school addition and everything but the auditorium at Central being renovated:
the district has significant unmet long-term maintenance needs across its facilities, which are mostly quite old; the newest school campus in the district, Kane Elementary, is 31 years old, and the oldest, Central Middle School, will be 100 years old next year
we still have music programs at the high school and Madison that are overflowing their practice space
we still have the worst tennis courts and track among 6A schools; so poor we cannot even host any home events
we still don't have locker rooms for tennis, track, or the cross country team, even when the girls cross country team are back-to-back state champions and the boys team are back-to-back state runners-up; athletes must change their clothes in their cars or small ordinary restrooms
Madison lacks proper separation of bus and private vehicle traffic
the Central and Madison auditoriums are in tough shape
the average bus in the fleet is old enough to vote
BUT HOW BIG A TAX INCREASE COULD BE BORNE AND JUSTIFIED?
If the district was going to voters for a tax increase, the bond issue planners determined the tax increase must be a responsible one that targeted saving jobs while addressing the critical facility needs without adding major new additions or buildings.
The bond issue planners were determined to not raise local property taxes higher than the average of peer districts across the state. So that set a limit of about 30 mills. The increase would amount to about $36 per year, or about a dime a day, for a home valued at $100,000: small change for a big difference. The average taxpayer savings in the most recent state income tax cut in January 2016, even as the state was in revenue failure, was $85. This bond issue is asking taxpayers to give back a fraction of that, but targeted at their local schools.
That was enough to fund $13.7 million in operating expenses over five years and address the major remaining facility needs. The district included the facility projects to assure voters that the reconfigured secondary schools would be operating efficiently and effectively.
THE BIG TARGETS ARE SAVING JOBS AND MAKING THE RECONFIGURED SCHOOLS OPERATE PROPERLY
The bond issue planners had saving teaching positions as their top priority. That is why over 70% of the bond is targeted at operating expenses that can be shifted from the general fund to bond funds, freeing up money that can legally be spent on teacher salaries. (Bond issue funds cannot, by state law, be used for salaries.) The shift is not to provide teachers with a raise; it is to build up the district's dangerously low general fund balance to allow it to absorb additional cuts in state funding without having to eliminate teaching positions. Projections are that the expense shifting via bond funding would be sufficient to save at least 15 teaching positions in 2017.
But one major cost reduction already approved by voters in 2013, by a 76% landslide YES vote, was reconfiguring the secondary schools from four to three sites. Those cost savings are now kicking in, but even they are not enough to compensate for the huge losses in state funding. Worse, the 2013 bond was enough to make the reconfiguration feasible, but the district's bonding capacity limits under its existing millage meant that various high-priority needs, to make those reconfigured secondary schools work better for students, could not be funded.
THE STATE REALLY DID CUT ALL TEXTBOOK FUNDS
Back when the state cut all of the funding for textbooks and several other programs, legislative leaders tried to excuse it by saying they were merely shifting the money into the state aid formula for more flexible spending. But the state aid formula funding DID NOT INCREASE when all of those funds were supposedly shifted over. So the state truly did cut all dedicated funding for textbooks and other purposes, using that funding to cover a deficit in the separate general appropriation. Net result? Another huge cut in public school funding for 2016-2017.