WB School Board tries to "sweet talk" taxpayers into passing referendum

THIS IS GAGGING ME.

Special GUESTVIEW in our local West Bend News:

Educating our children while remaining fiscally responsible (Yep, trying the "guilt factor.")
By JOE CARLSON AND KATHY VANEERDEN

The West Bend Joint School District is a topperforming district in many areas as evidenced by awards from Newsweek and ACT Red Quill. Our Advanced Placement Courses and Wisconsin Knowledge Concepts Evaluation scores are among the best in the state. We expect to educate our children in safe energy-efficient buildings with classrooms and common areas maintained to the same standards we have for our homes and neighborhoods. All of this must be accomplished while upholding our fiscally conservative spending values, which is why we are the sixth lowest spending school district out of 426 districts in Wisconsin. We can be proud of our past record of achievement and we need your help to sustain it.

(Here is the buildup..... we are such an award-winning school district and we can't continue being that unless our school buildings have a Taj-Mahal effect. Of course, throwing in the "safety" factor will guilt everyone into feeling like one of our kids will be shot tomorrow. We should be ashamed that we treat our schools so shabbily while our pristine, high-end homes are the epitomy of castles. Yes, that's a typo in the first sentence.)

As any realtor will attest to, property values and job creation in this community depend on the education our children receive, our student achievement and the physical conditions of our schools compared with other communities. The cost of doing nothing to improve our schools will affect our community infrastructure.

(GUILT, GUILT AND MORE GUILT. Our schools look fine. It's our school board that needs work. It's our deferred maintenance that got us in this predicament and now we are stuck with that. OH, and when the referendum goes down, we will lose even the the necessities of that deferred maintenance.)

Each member of this School Board is fully aware of the current state of the economy and the hardship placed on some families today. We are also extremely concerned about the overcrowding and the negative condition of some of our school district buildings and classrooms. As parents and taxpayers just like you, we would not be doing the job you elected us to do if we did not offer this community a cost-effective long-term solution. Our facilities need more than just a temporary, ineffective easy fix.

(What is "negative condition"? By the way, you are NOT doing the job we elected you to do. We want you to conservatively get the job done according to the economy we live in and you refuse. Instead, you are willing to risk it all with this stupid referendum. We will all lose. Nice representation. Thanks.)

In October, our School Board chose to remove the two referendum questions from the November ballot primarily due to the unprecedented financial market chaos that came on suddenly last summer and early fall. Financial markets froze up and uncertainty prevailed everywhere. The board did not expect the economy to be in recovery by April, so we went to work with our architects on the plan to modify our construction preparation to ensure the delay would not prevent us from getting the buildings expanded to meet the student growth, while keeping the cost the same.

(Awwww...how sweet. You are making us feel good about postponing the referendum for us poor slobs that saw the economy start going down in flames. But hey, times are a'changin', so chin up, Bucko! Let's throw it back in the ring now and put on our best smile! NOT)

Recently, the School Board secured a 6.3-acre parcel in the village of Jackson to build a new Jackson Elementary School on a parcel adjacent to the Boys and Girls Club. The new Jackson Elementary will accommodate 650 students and allow more students who live in Jackson to attend their neighborhood school, rather than being bused to Decorah Elementary. The new site also addresses current safety issues of being located on a dangerously busy intersection.

(Oh yes, and thank you for spending hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars JUST BEFORE THE REFERENDUM. I feel even more confident that you represent me in this economy. Nice move. Now we will own land we can't build on when the referendum fails AND we will be MINUS EVEN MORE MONEY.)

Since building will take two years, April 2009 was the latest we could wait before we must decide among progressively negative, wasteful, and painful choices to alleviate the overcrowding including: adding more temporary classroom trailers (beyond the two we have), redistricting some fifth-graders into our middle schools and pushing Badger, one of our oldest and most-in-need buildings, to well over 1,100 students within three years. Delaying the facility projects means aging facilities and overdue upgrades will simply be another year older as class sizes go beyond the 30 to 32 students in our middle schools and in excess of 25 in elementary.

(Sobbing now. Trailers? Oh no, not trailers! Aging facilities? Shocking! We are such a horrible community! We got this way because of our school board(s). So take care of the initial problems and THEN we can talk bells and whistles, k?)

Interest and construction cost savings should not be the main factor on whether or not we should do this project now. We agree wholeheartedly. We must take care of student growth, overdue repairs, and upgrades now, when we can literally save millions simply because interest rates have now fallen to 3.96 percent for 20-year bonds and actual construction bids for projects are coming in 10 to 15 percent lower than estimates; saving millions more. Realizing these savings now while putting some of our skilled trade workers back to work this summer building our schools has the potential to bring the cost of this project in lower from our estimates. We know there is never a good time for a building referendum. Economic recovery is expected by most forecasters to occur in 2010 when the added taxes of $10.00 per month on a $175,000 home would begin for 20 years. Investing in education, now, will help our community begin to recover and support future growth.

(We are doomed.)

TIME TO REPLACE THE SCHOOL BOARD WITH PEOPLE WHO REALLY DO REPRESENT THEIR COMMUNITY.



(Joe Carlson and Kathy VanEerden are West Bend School Board members.)