COULD A SMALLER BOND ISSUE MEET PRIORITY NEEDS WITHOUT RAISING TAXES?

In 2013 voters approved, by a landslide YES vote of 76%, to reconfigure the district's secondary schools. Expanding the high school to serve grades 9-12 instead of 11-12 allowed Madison Middle School to be relocated to the former Mid-High and for Central Middle School to be renovated. One of the main reasons for this overhaul was to reduce from four secondary school sites to three in order to reduce operating expenses amidst continued state funding cuts.

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These large projects pushed the district's bonding capacity at its current millages to the limit. The projects were expedited with a lease-purchase arrangement so that they could be finished as quickly as possible to quickly realize the benefits. Closing the old Madison campus as soon as possible will reduce operating costs, and expanding the high school by 2015 allowed students to quickly realize the educational benefits of fewer school transitions along with improved facilities. So Central Middle School is re-opening on August 18, three years after the bond issue for secondary schools, and its renovations will be fully completed in a few months.

But just because the projects are finished does not mean they have been paid for by the taxpayers. The district will be using all of its available millage to pay off the bonds for them for several more years. For now, ANY additional bonds will require an increase in the millage.

So the new bond issues have been structured to raise property taxes as little as possible to meet priority needs while keeping the burden on taxpayer as steady as possible from year-to-year and avoid unwelcome swings in millage rates. The priority needs are to free up operating funds to save teaching positions and preserve class sizes despite continued severe state funding shortfalls. The renovation projects in the bond issue are focused on making the reconfigured secondary school facilities work better for their adjusted programs, and were already identified back in 2013 but could not be funded in that initial reconfiguration bond issue due to bonding capacity limits.

Passage of the two bond issue questions will increase the district's sinking fund millage from about 27 mills to 30 mills. That would keep it just below the average for our state-defined community peer group of districts of similar size and socioeconomic status.

Bear in mind that since 2012 student enrollment has increased 4% while state funding has declined over 15%. We simply cannot improve, or even maintain, the quality of our schools with more students and this much less funding. Any and all efficiencies have already been exhausted; in 2016 the district has been forced to cut 39 positions, including 21 teaching positions, which is 5% of its teaching force. Without additional bonds, which means an unavoidable increase in property taxes, the state funding cuts projected for 2017 will force the district to cut even more teachers.