This is the third time in ten months that the Mauston School District is asking the voters to pass an operational referendum. I posted below what I wrote about this after the referendum failed in November. It has a lot of details and stats. This referendum is exactly the same as the one that failed in November. What’s different? They are trying it on one of the historically lowest turnout elections of the year – the February non-partisan primary ballot.

For all of the reasons stated below, the voters should reject this referendum. The Mauston School Board and administration, which has so badly managed finances to date, is threatening to fold the district and merge into neighboring districts if the referendum fails. So? It seems that merging small districts across the state is a good path to financial viability. Bigger districts with less administration and better economies of scale are a good thing – not a bad thing.

It is also worth noting that nothing in the referendum rhetoric talks about making kids learn better. There is nothing in there about better educational outcomes or better opportunities for kids. It’s all about propping up an expensive and failing bureaucracy.

On a state level, this referendum attempt is another example of how we need statewide referendum reform. It is infuriating that this school district is allowed to ask again for an operational referendum within a year of the voters rejecting two other requests. The district asked for more money. The voters said “no.” The district asked again. The voters said “no” again. Here the district is again, asking again, less than three months after the last “no.” At what point do school officials listen to the voters and manage within the means that the voters approved? At what point does “no” mean “no?”

As our current referendum laws are set up, a school district can put the same rubbish on the ballot election after election. They only have to get approval once. In the example of Mauston, they are clearly targeting a low-turnout election in an effort to sneak one past when the voters are occupied with other things. If this referendum passes, does it indicate that the citizens actually approve when they rejected it in a high-turnout presidential election held three months ago? Of course not. The school district is shopping elections instead of trying to listen to the true intent of the voters.

State lawmakers must reform the referendum process to prevent predatory school boards. No, it can’t happen with Governor Tony Evers at the helm. Education is gotten worse and worse under his leadership, and he is not going to do anything to stop the slide. But referendum reform needs to be on the agenda of Wisconsin’s next Republican governor.

Here is my post about this from after the failed attempt in November.

---

This is going to be a long post, so buckle up. It is just one example of how Wisconsin government school districts cry poor and threaten kids’ education even when they are swimming in cash and how the data shows exactly where the money is going. Let’s go…

The Mauston School District is threatening to dissolve after an operational referendum was rejected by the voters this month. But wait, there’s more… the failed referendum in November was after they had another failed referendum just seven months ago in April. But wait, there’s more… despite the voters telling the school board to live within their means twice within a year, the school board is considering putting ANOTHER operational referendum on the ballot in February. But this time, they are threatening to dissolve the school district if they don’t get more cash. They just can’t possibly see a way forward without getting more money. They are blaming the usual suspects: declining aid with declining student population, rising expenses, and that dastardly equalization aid formula. You can read their agony in this story by WPR, but that’s the gist.

What’s really going on?

All of the data used in this post is found in various reports publicly available from the state DPI. I prefer longitudinal data and the data set takes us to the 2022-2023 school year. I’ll refer to school years going forward by the year when the school year ended. All good? Let’s dig into the Mauston School District and their alleged woes.

ENROLLMENT:

For the past 10 years, enrollment in the district has been relatively flat with an average enrollment of 1,448 students. In 2013, they had an enrollment of 1,462. In 2023, they had an enrollment of 1,410. Over a 10 year period, that’s an enrollment decline of 3.6% over a decade. This is actually better than most school districts that are facing steeper enrollment declines due to the overall demographic trends in the state.

So let’s lick apart the superintendent’s statement from the WPR story:

“It’s so enrollment driven, which is a challenge in rural areas,” Heesch said. “You’re seeing declining enrollments, your revenues are either flat or decreasing based on those enrollments, while your expenditures, especially through an inflationary period, have increased dramatically.”

Enrollment is down. A bit. A little bit. But a 3.6% decline over a decade is very, very manageable. It is not a precipitous collapse. So let’s look at revenue and costs.

REVENUE:

Over the same 10 year period, from 2013 to 2023, Total comparative revenue is up 28.7% from $20,795,476 to $26,757,154. In per-student terms over the same period, revenue increased 34.5% from $14,114 per student to $18,977 per student.

In inflation adjusted dollars, $18,977 in 2023 was worth about $14,814 in 2013 dollars according to the CPI calculator from the federal BLS.

So, the conclusion is that revenue on both a total and on a per-student basis has kept up with inflation and then some. District revenue has exceeded the inflation rate by about 5%. That’s not an excessive amount, but it does show that the taxpayers have provided increasingly more funding to the Mauston School District in excess of the rate of inflation.

COSTS:

Enrollment is flat to a slight decline. Revenue is increasing in excess of inflation. So why is the school districts claiming a financial crisis that may require them to dissolve without even more money?

It’s the costs. It’s always the costs. Let’s take a look:

In the report titled “Audited Annual Report Comparative Cost” for Mauston in the longitudinal reports (it downloads as an excel sheet), we can see the spending for every line item over time. The thing to look for is which line items are increasing in excess to inflation or are new expenditures. Here are some key cost drivers (note that I am going to use per-pupil numbers to normalize the spending to enrollment):

• Total Instructional Expenditures are up 22.4% from $6,983 per student to $8,544 per student. That’s not bad. It’s actually lower than the rate of inflation over the same period.
• Operational/Administration/Other expenditures are up 51.1% from $2,793 to $4,220 over the 10-year period. That is double the rate of inflation.
• That doesn’t tell the whole story of the cost of administration. Beginning in 2015, all Wisconsin districts broke out Administration costs into its own category (thank you, Republicans) so we can see them better, Between 2015 and 2023, just Administration expenses went up 37.5%. Over the same period, Operational expenses increased 47.5%. Both categories were increasing well in excess of the rate of inflation.
  • The big drivers in these categories were “Operation Administration,” “Other Support Services,” and “Purchased Instructional Services.”
• Interestingly, between 2013 and 2023, transportation costs went up less than 1% – well below the rate of inflation. So the excuse that many rural districts use for spending is the cost of transportation in a geographically large, population sparse, district does not apply here.
• Facilities costs went up 77% between 2013 and 2023 from $1,838 per student to $3,259 per student.

SUMMARY:

The story of the Mauston School District is similar to so many other school districts in Wisconsin. Student enrollment has been flat to declining, but their revenue has been increasing to match the rate of inflation and then some. The spending on direct student instruction – the money spent on actual teachers in the classrooms – has increased, but not as quickly as the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, spending on administration and facilities has far exceeded the rate of inflation – soaking up all of the additional revenue, and then some, and squeezing out spending on teachers.

The alleged financial struggles of the Mauston School District are entirely self-inflicted by wasteful spending on administration and facilities. Meanwhile, the students and the teachers are left wanting. The taxpayers are right to deny them more money through an operational referendum and the school board and administration are utterly incompetent and/or corrupt if they can’t manage the district’s finances any better than this.