By GENE KEMMETER
of The Gazette
Voters in the School District of the Tomorrow River in Amherst will go to the polls Tuesday, June 19, for a referendum question to allow the district to exceed the Wisconsin revenue limits by $350,000 for each of the next five years.
Absentee ballots are available from town and village clerks in the district, and the School Board has been meeting with voters to explain the situation. One meeting was held at the school complex, another at Jensen Center and the third was scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday, June 7, at the Lanark Town Hall.
In the April 3 election, voters rejected a question to exceed those limits for an undetermined amount of years, with 825 favoring the proposal and 960 opposing.
After the defeat, the board sent out questionnaires to residents to find out why the referendum failed and learned that voters wanted a sunset clause on the additional funding and seemed to understand the situation, Joe Reed, district administrator, said.
He said the district has been operating at a deficit, and actually needs to trim $633,000 from the budget for 2001-2002 to avoid exceeding the limits but it felt the schools could continue to function if voters approve the $350,000 referendum.
The board identified $303,391 in cost savings by instituting athletic participation and parking fees, increasing driver's education fees and eliminating assistant coaching positions, a maintenance job, 5.5 teaching positions and a physical therapist, as well as supplies, travel and equipment.
Last month the board identified the remaining $350,000, which will be cut if the referendum fails, including six-plus full-time positions. Those positions include a vocal music teacher, a technology education teacher, an instructional assistant, a janitor, a maintenance staff position and 1.3 positions in special education.
The position cuts, which include some part-time positions, amount to $286,502 of the $350,000. Another $20,000 would be saved by reducing bus routes from 10 to nine.
While not as expensive, the remaining funds cover extracurricular activities and relate to the elimination of coaches or advisers as well as the programs for baseball, cross country, dance, girls softball, golf, wrestling, middle school cheerleading, pep band, forensics, student council, band performances, plays, prom adviser and choir performances.
Softball, golf and wrestling have produced state championships in recent years, but Reed said the district can't cut educational programs that are required by the state.
Athletically, that would leave the district offering football and volleyball in the fall, boys and girls basketball in the winter and boys and girls track in the spring, sufficient to meet requirements to provide equal sports opportunities for boys and girls.
If the referendum passes, property taxes would increase about 86 cents per $1,000 of equalized valuation in 2001, meaning a property owner with a home valued at $100,000 would pay $86 more per year.
Reed admits the district is in a dilemma as far as the educational and athletic program. "If it doesn't pass, it will be devastating," Reed said. "We will lose so much."
Heading his list of fears is the state's open enrollment program, which allows students to transfer to other school districts. "We would start losing students, I'm sure," he said, referring to students transferring to another school to participate in a sport. That would also mean the district would receive less state funding because of lower enrollment.
Low enrollment is at the crux of the problem, because the state aid represents about $8,000 per student, and enrollment drops don't usually occur in one class but are spread across the board, meaning the district can't reduce staff.
"The darn kids don't leave all one classroom," Reed said. "Instead of 20 kids, we have 19 now and I can't cut the teacher."
Another problem is state aid hasn't kept pace with inflation, a situation even the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance notes, saying "the only property tax levy that has grown slower than state income has been the school levy."
That impacts school districts, Reed said, because the increases in state aid have failed to keep pace with inflation. "It's all going up faster than the 1 to 2 percent going up with the state aid," he said.
"I think if we can get this passed, it will keep us stable for five years," he said. "It will help schools grow."
The economic situation in the area and the rest of the country hasn't helped the situation for increased spending either, with low agricultural prices and rumors of layoffs affecting income. "Our timing wasn't too hot," he said. "But at the time we started and laid all these plans out 18 months ago, things were great."
The district started predicting problems with its budget and the need for an addition to the school complex about two-and-a-half years ago, he said, and proposed that addition in the April 3 election through authorization of $7,595,000 in building bonds. That issue lost at the polls, 994-778.
He doesn't know how the board will revise the building issue, he said, but he suspects some construction project will be proposed because the facility problems won't vanish. "Prices will be different," he said.