This is probably the easiest decision on the ballot. The West Bend School District is facing a rapid and persistent DECLINE in enrollment and has done almost nothing to plan for it. You would be an imbecile to give them over $150 million to educate fewer kids with zero commitment to improve educational outcomes.

In West Bend, district residents will be asked to approve a $106.25 million facilities referendum to fund security improvements, critical capital maintenance improvements, improve operational efficiency, realign grade levels and replace Jackson Elementary School.

 

With interest included, at a rate of 4.75%, and annual fair market property growth, at 2%, the estimated total cost is $165.45 million. The current interest rate of 3.95% would place the total cost at about $13 million less, for an estimated $152.45 million.

 

The estimated tax impact would be an increase in the mill rate of $102 per $100,000 of assessed property value for approximately 20 years, if approved (based on a 20year repayment for Tax-Exempt General Obligation Bonds, a 2% annual fair market property value growth and approximately $59.2 million in estimated interest costs — the cost at a 4.75% interest rate.)

 

Included in the referendum plan is the closing of Decorah Elementary, Fair Park Elementary, the Rolfs Education Center and the Education Service Center (district central office), which will help the district avoid $51 million in capital maintenance costs, according to the WBSD.

 

The referendum question for WBSD residents on the Nov. 5 ballot reads: “Shall the West Bend Joint School District Number 1, Washington County, Wisconsin be authorized to issue pursuant to Chapter 67 of the Wisconsin Statutes, general obligation bonds in an amount not to exceed $106,250,000 for the public purpose of paying the cost of a district-wide school building and facility improvement project consisting of: construction of a new Jackson Elementary building on district-owned land; renovations and construction of additions, including for safe and secure entrances at East/West High Schools; renovations, including new safe and secure entrances and grade level reconfiguration at Green Tree and McLane Schools; renovations and grade level reconfiguration at Silverbrook and Badger Schools; districtwide capital maintenance and site improvements; and acquisition of furnishings, fixtures and equipment?’

There are some interesting plans. The root cause, of course, is that the West Bend Schools District’s enrollment has collapsed and looks to continue to decline for the foreseeable future. The story is happening across the nation and is a demographic trend with which everyone is grappling.

For the moment, I will put aside my frustration that this district has seen these enrollment numbers for 10 years and did nothing. Small changes made along the way are preferable to massive changes after there is crisis.

The plans on the table are to close a couple of buildings, build a big new school in Jackson, upgrade some buildings, yadda yadda yadda. Same old stuff. It’s all designed to create a package that is attractive enough to enough voters to get them so pass an expensive referendum so that a lot of people will get paid and the school leaders get to pretend that they accomplished something.

Spoiler alert… it is very, very inexpensive to just close buildings, sell them (you can even sell them cheap to prioritize getting them off the taxpayers’ books instead of getting a windfall), and move kids to ample available space in the rest of the district. You don’t need to spend tens of millions of dollars shrink your physical footprint to adjust to fewer customers. No business on earth does that.

Here we go! Referendum pending. I would remind readers that I and other local professionals did and analysis and made recommendations to improve and adjust facilities for the district four years ago. It would have reduced the footprint to match enrollment and made substantial improvements. Cost? About $50 million. The study was utterly ignored and they continued to neglect facilities like they had for the decade before. When the referendum comes, vote no. Don’t reward poor management.

WEST BEND — The West Bend School District’s construction partner, Findorff, provided financial estimates for four broad groups of building and site work that total $229.4 million over 15 years across the district, or more than $15 million a year on average.

 

The West Bend School Board heard the presentation at its Jan. 22 meeting, learning about how the detailed building and site conditions assessment completed in December of 2023 by Eppstein Uhen Architects (EUA) were being used to develop the preliminary 15-year budgets.

 

That assessment covers current and future capital maintenance needs of the district’s facilities and sites, according to a recent release. The budget estimates presented at the meeting do not include estimated costs for the other two components of the facility assessment related to educational adequacy and capacity/space utilization.

 

According to Jen Wimmer, superintendent of the West Bend School District, the ongoing capital maintenance needs of the West Bend School District’s buildings are significant.

Teachers are mad. Water is wet. I wish they got this angry about the porn in the curriculum.

According to the district, the changes would lead to lower deductibles and lower out-of-pocket maximums, and employees will have two plans to choose from and three family sizes to choose from for the plans. There will be additional incentives for the second plan and minimal employee premium increases from 2023.

 

One reason for dropping the current HRA model was that the district had to reserve an increasing amount of dollars each year due to rollovers, which led to less dollars being available for wage increases. Another was that not every employee used it the same and received the same benefit from it.

 

However, during the School Board meeting on Monday, teachers spoke out against the plan, with some saying they had been promised the HRA benefit as a form of compensation in addition to their salaries.

 

“I am concerned about the district’s decision to take HRA dollars away from teachers who had been promised this money as part of their compensation,” said Shelly Krueger, a teacher in the district for 32 years. “… I urge the school board and the district administration to reconsider its decision to take HRA money away from our teachers, otherwise future promises may sound empty.”

 

“It was understood that one of the possibilities in new health insurance plans meant that the HRA may be discontinued. It was not, however, made clear until the July 10th board meeting that teachers that have banked their HRA money, me as one of them, which was given to them as part of their compensation, would have that money taken away from them by the district without having any additional compensation in return,” said teacher Hailey Dougherty. “There are teachers with thousands of dollars saved in their accounts, and taking away that money is robbing teachers of their overall compensation. I strongly encourage the board to speak with HR and find a solution to allow teachers to use this money that has been earned.”

Here’s the rub:

an HSA works more like a bank account that the employee can put money into before it is taxed, whereas an HRA is an employer-funded plan.

From the Washington County Insider.

Police Chief Tim Dehring confirmed via email an incident occurred Monday, February 21, 2022; a pair of 11-year-old students were involved. The incident reportedly happened on school bus No. 128 that carried students from Silverbrook Intermediate School.

 

One of the students reportedly suffered a concussion.

 

That same Monday, Feb. 21, 2022, parents from the district spoke before the West Bend School Board. Parents were upset about a different bullying incident involving a 14-year-old boy and a 10-year-old boy.

 

According to parent the 14-year-old was bit; administration later watched a video with the parent which showed the younger child attacking the older child with a sharp stick. The parent’s testimony is below.

 

 

The parent of the boy who was attacked was particularly upset she had not been contacted about the incident by the school district.

The issue here is not really that kids are occasionally violent and there are some kids who are chronically violent. This has always been true. It is also more prevalent now as kids return from the isolation of virtual learning to the stressful, complicated, agonizing social situations of school.

The issue here is that the administration and the school board have not responded well to the incidents. They have not notified parents of the kids impacted. They have not taken action against the offenders to protect other kids. They have been dismissive and haughty toward parents who ask questions. They appear more interested in depressing violence statistics than they are in protecting the victims or getting the offenders help – they are kids, after all. No wonder parents are getting frustrated.

This letter to the editor by Carol Heger takes us back a bit to illustrate the yawning gap between the rhetoric of the current board members and their actions. The spending doesn’t have anything to do with education. It has to do with supporting a political constituency with your money.

On Monday night, Sept. 27th, the West Bend School District (WBSD) held its annual meeting. Once again, the so-called, self-identified “conservative” school board members are proposing to raise the tax levy. This will be the third year in a row, if this resolution is approved, that the school board has increased the tax levy. In the 2019-20 school year, it was raised 7.15%, in 2020-21 it was raised 6.21%, and now the board is proposing a 7.25% increase.

 

In addition, the annual meeting revealed that the district’s gross total expenditures proposed for the 2021-22 school year are to increase 7.12% from $98,504,627 to $103,376,400.  This increase in spending is happening when enrollment has declined about 200 students from 6,034 last year to an estimated 5,824 this school year.  (In the last 10 years, the district has lost about 1,000 students.)  This increase in spending and the property tax increase are happening when the schools all over Wisconsin are flush with federal stimulus funding.

Read the whole thing.