Curmudgeon's Corner

Bruce

Question 1: Is this school being proposed to expand the kindergarten program in Germantown? It appears that there is not an  overcrowding issue in the district. So that leads me to believe that this building is being built to provide taxpayer funded day care. As this expanded kindergarten program was sold to the taxpayers as a "pure financial gain" it would appear that in order to get the "gain" we as taxpayers must shell out 16.5M in new taxes, which would, in the long run, be revenue neutral or a loss to the taxpayers.

Question 2: Why isn't the School board going to Washington County to seek funds for school maintenance and building expenses? The county is flush with cash from the never ending sales tax, so much so that they are creating new ways to spend their excess cash. An example of this is the boards land buy back and private musuem proposals. Will the School Board seek funds from Washington County to build the school?

Irwin Fletcher

I told Al that I will always try to respond, here, with knowns rather than beliefs.  He's also asked that I keep each response under 400 words.

I voted to put this question to the voters because of the current and pending space issues and the adverse tax implications which will exist without another elementary school.  Yes, the optional full-day Kindergarten program is at risk - along with the tax breaks it has brought.  What tax breaks? Before it was added, the annual state aid hung around the $10M mark; it is $13.5M this year.  You can find data and graphs here: dpi.wi.gov/.../7yeareqaidhistory.xls  The aid we gained has allowed the total tax levy to be more or less frozen.  Compare the school tax portion of your 2007 tax bill to your 2005 bill:  mine has dropped 8%.  Robt W Baird is showing that the annual debt retirement payment would be about $1.5M, which is much less than the $3.5M increase in aid.  

This would be the first new elementary school in the District since 1957 and the first increase in elementary classroom space in nearly 20 years.  There are overcrowding issues at Amy Belle, MacArthur, and County Line schools.  The new presence of sewer and water in parts of the Rockfield area will soon tempt new residential development which will add that small school to the list.  Today there are 200 available lots for homes in the Amy Belle attendance area.   Our schoolhouse doors are now closed to non-resident children who might want to attend our schools under Open Enrollment:  each child brings $6K when they arrive, which cuts our taxes, and there's usually no added burden since they are assigned to classrooms with empty desks.  In contrast, when parents place their children in our public competitor's schools, they take $6K of our tax money away from us and also diminish available aids to offset local taxes.  Many parents are doing this because of the space issues we have and the programs we cannot provide.

As far as Washington County funding of school district maintenance and building expenses, that's not an area that counties are authorized to fund under Chapter 59 of the state statutes.  Museum funding and land acquisitions are authorized, as is the funding and operation of University of Wisconsin extension colleges.  A direct answer is no, the School Board isn't seeking funds from Washington County.

Bruce

Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately I do not buy it. Lets review.

1) RW Baird says that the district will gain 3.5M in aid but we have to spend 1.5M to get it for a net gain of 2M. Are you or RWBaird going to guarantee that aid for the life of the debt? I can guarantee that the debt will be here for 20 or more years but there is no guarantee that the aid will stay. The aid formulas that the state uses vary so much that year to year we do not know what we will receive in aid. I am not willing to go out on that limb to build a school on the hope we might get more money. Are you? Can you guarantee that the state aids will continue to be in Germantowns favor to cover this new level of debt?

2) You state that we do not have room for transfer students and the tax dollars they bring. I am fine with that. Germantown Schools should be for Germantown residents. But you also state that these children are taking up "empty desks" in the classrooms. If there are empty desks, why do we need a new school?

3) You state that residents of Germantown are leaving to go to other districts. I do not buy that either. The numbers you reference state that Germantown schools are growing in enrollment, so therefore while we may have some children leaving we are still having a net gain. Therefore their is no reduction in tax dollars to the district, as a negative, just not as much of a positive gain.

4) Is the overcrowding you reference actual "overcrowding" or just that class sizes have gotten over the "preferred class size"? If the preferred class size is 20 students then you can say that 21 is an overcrowded classroom. So I need to see the actual numbers at the schools you reference, actual students per class, to determine if there is overcrowding. It seems that the educrats want smaller and smaller class sizes and will use this as a reason to hire more staff, build more buildings and so on, but there is little evidence to show that a class of 25 students learns any differently than a class of 20 students.

So Bruce prove me wrong. It seems that while the debt level of Germantown Schools is continuing to go down, this is just a reason to spend more money. Heaven forbid that we have no debt at all.

Irwin Fletcher

Reply to 1):  Baird developed only the debt repayment structure, not the current tax savings of $3.5M from partial implementation of another option for Kindergarten.  The equalization aid formula does not vary "year to year".  it was only changed one time, in 1996.  State Senator Alberta Darling says that there are no active discussions in Madison to change the formula at any point in the future.  There is a 15 year history of dependency at stake.

Reply to 2)  I guess I wasn't clear enough, let me try again.  If there were empty desks in classrooms, then we would plan to accept non-resident children to fill those desks, and the following autumn we'd get a $6000 rebate per student, paid by the school district from which they came.  We wouldn't have had any significant costs, since the classroom teacher was already in place:  therefore, that $6K gets applied as a reduction in that year's local school tax.  But, since there are no empty desks, we won't be obtaining those rebates.

Reply to 3)  The Milwaukee Journal published an open enrollment statistics (2007) snapshot:  graphics.jsonline.com/.../enroll_020308_big.gif  Notice that Germantown had a net loss of $40K in Open Enrollment:  over 45 children attended other public schools last year, at your $252K expense.  This year (2008) there are 59 children of this school district who are attending other public schools, and we're sending over $350K of our tax money to those districts and that's just not acceptable to most taxpayers. That's not money we aren't getting, that's money we collect in taxes and then are required by law to give away.  To paraphrase:  Germantown School tax dollars should be for Germantown Schools, not MPS or any other district.

Reply to 4) Enrollment at Amy Belle School is beyond what the state plumbing codes allow for the size and type of septic system.  County Line School has 553 students:  among other issues, gym classes commence while some children are still trying to finish their lunch within the same space, and the music room is smaller than the food prep area. MacArthur School has converted storage rooms into tiny educational spaces to service special needs children.  The last available classroom anywhere was out at little Rockfield School, but it is being used to conduct the entire school district's Early Childhood program.

The universal measure of a public school district's success is the achievement of its students on "state tests".  Since 2002, Germantown elementary student test scores have marched upwards.  The outcome from the current year won't be known until late spring, but we can compare the 2006-2007 results for all of the metro Milwaukee districts.  The school district that is first in third grade reading and math, first in fourth grade math and science, second in fourth grade social studies and language arts, and third in fourth grade reading is Germantown.  Ask the parents of those children whether or not they believe the same outcomes would exist if there were 25 per cent more children in the same classroom, simultaneously vying for instructional attention or having their lessons customized so that the child learns the required material in his or her unique way.